News archive (12 / 2012)

Samsung has announced today that they have reached a significant sales milestone in their home nation.

The company has sold 1 million Galaxy Note II devices in Korea in three months, with sales ever accelerating.

Globally, the company has sold 5 million Note II and says sales momentum may lead them to 10 million sales by the end of January.

The Galaxy Note II is arguably the best phone to own right now, as its specs and feature set are mostly unrivaled. The phone is also popular for its large 5.5-inch screen, a huge boost over the iPhone and even over its own more popular brother, the Galaxy S III.

Netflix movies and TV shows will soon be available to nearly all different screen sizes and bandwidth needs.

The company will prepare 120 different encodes for every piece of video content it offers its streaming subscribers making sure they look optimal on hundreds of different devices.

Netflix is available on 910 different devices, including smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, Blu-ray players and Smart TVs.

The company says it has a "Netflix Delivery Specifications" guidebook that includes instructions for the kinds of audio and video they can accept from content partners. Into the future, the company will now also certify production houses that will support their guidelines.

Digital Supply Chain VP Kevin McEntee adds: "Frequently Netflix finds itself looking for opportunities to grow its streaming catalogs quickly with budget dollars that have not yet been allocated. Increasingly the Netflix deal teams are considering the effectiveness of a content owner's delivery abilities when making those spending decisions. Simply put, content owners who can deliver quickly and without error are getting more licensing revenue from Netflix."

A new report out of China claims that demand for Nokia's latest flagship has not waned.

After initial batches sold out in the nation within 24 hours, the report claims that a new batch sold out in just 20 minutes.

Queues were formed at the flagship Nokia store in Shanghai, and those on line even had to book their spot ahead of time to guarantee it.

Additionally, the phone was made available at 360Buy and 51Buy, large retailers in the country.

At this time, it is unclear whether the sell out was due to small supply, as well, but demand certainly appears to be high for the Lumia in China.

According to a new report, the open-source mobile OS Tizen will finally see the light of day in 2013.

Tizen is notable because it is backed by Samsung and has support from Japanese major carrier DoCoMo and global powerhouse Vodafone.

At least one phone running Tizen will be launched next year, although the report could not pinpoint a timeframe nor any specs.

It appears that at first the phone will be launched in Japan, with other countries getting the phone soon after.

Samsung, who has made a fortune becoming an Android market leader, will look to diversify somewhat with Tizen, along with their upcoming Windows Phone 8 offerings.

Tizen is completely open sourced and based on open standards and is hosted by the Linux Foundation.

The creators of the new "John Dies at the End" film have created a particularly funny trailer asking people not to pirate their film, or else.

Over the years we have seen numerous anti-piracy ads created by groups like the MPAA and RIAA, most of which have bordered on ridiculous.

The most infamous of all-time is most likely the "You Wouldn't Steal a Car" series in which words fly out at the viewer stating that they since they wouldn't steal a car, or a handbag, they shouldn't steal films either.

Check the trailer here (thanks to Enigmax):

A new Android trojan has been found that causes infected devices to be used for spamming text message purposes and even DDoS attacks.

The "Android.DDoS.1.origin" trojan was first discovered by effective Russian security firm Doctor Web, and tricks its way onto consumer's Android devices by disguising itself as a legitimate app from Google.

After installed, the app creates an icon that is an exact replica of the Google Play Store. Clicking it will still send you to the Store, but there is much more malicious occurrences happening in the background. The trojan will immediately try to connect to its Command and Control (C&C) server and if it does, the server operators are sent the victim's phone number. Further instructions are sent via SMS.

The malware, if given a DDoS command, will begin sending data packets to a specified address. This is bad for the site if there are enough infected devices and also bad for the user, who is using up bandwidth unwillingly and criminally.

Earlier today, Google was forced to block TwitPic temporarily, causing issues for Twitter fans who were using Chrome to try to access some of their favorite tweets (with pictures).

As of writing, the block has been removed and users will no longer be prompted by a scary malware warning when trying to access Twitter from their browser.

TwitPic was quick to let users that the issue was a false positive:

Working to fix the google chrome malware notice when visiting Twitpic.com as this is not true or the case, trying to contact google

-- TwitPic (@TwitPic) December 30, 2012

Samsung Electronics has plans to significantly expand their Silicon Valley campus.

The plans include a new 1.1 million square foot sales and R&D headquarters that features a 10-story tower along with an amenity pavilion and parking garage.

As Samsung says: "The design seeks to encourage interaction among staff, foster connections with the community and provide a space to attract employment in the highly competitive tech market, which is growing at a faster pace than overall employment."

Additionally, Samsung Information Systems America Inc. (SISA), will begin relocating their current R&D center to a new 8.5-acre site "and expand to two new 6-story class-A office buildings totaling approximately 385,000 square foot. (each 192,500 sq. ft.) with two 5-6 story parking structures."

Both projects have completion dates for mid-to-late 2013 with occupancy targeting 2014.

Earlier this year, Pakistan began blocking YouTube in the nation after the infamous "Innocence of Muslims" went viral, causing riots in many Muslim nations around the world.

This weekend, the country's government decided to lift the ban, however it was reinstated just 3 minutes later after more "blasphemous material" was still available via the site.

Before lifting the ban, the government noted they had taken extra steps to ensure all offensive content would be blocked. Clearly, there was a mistake made.

"Innocence of Muslims" was released in September and openly mocked the religion's sacred Prophet Muhammad. In fact, in Egypt, the maker of the film has been convicted and sentenced to death, ensuring he will never, ever travel there.

Pakistan used the video and the outcry to outright ban YouTube, which many in the nation saw as a trick to control their access to their Internet. Read one such editorial on the matter: "We need to make it clear that we do not wish to regress to a dark age when a centralized authority controlled all access to information. Retreating to such an era would essentially mean that we were longer living in a democracy."

CEO Mark Pincus made the announcement back in November, but the time has finally come; Zynga will shut down major games in an effort to reduce costs.

The social gaming king will shut down or stop accepting players for 11 games.

Resources will be moved to R&D and also to more successful games. It is clear that the company overextended itself when preparing to go public, putting out too many games in too little time. As part of the plan, the company will also lay off 100 employees, close offices and reduce its investment in "The Ville," the ripoff Sims game.

Over the last year, the company's stock has fallen from as high as $15.90 to just $2.33 today. The company IPOd at $10.

Full list of dead games (via Crunch):

PetVille – Shut down December 30th
Mafia Wars 2 - Shut down December 30th
FishVille – Shut down December 5th
Vampire Wars – Shut down December 5th
Treasure Isle – Shut down December 5th
Indiana Jones Adventure World – Closed to new players, shuts down January 14th
Mafia Wars Shakedown – Pulled from app stores
Forestville – Pulled from app stores
Montopia – Shut down December 21st
Mojitomo – Pulled from app stores
Word Scramble Challenge – Pulled from app stores

According to sources, Intel's virtual cable TV service with set-top box will launch soon on a city-by-city basis, allowing it to bypass many of the licensing hurdles that have delayed its launch to date.

Content providers have been reluctant to negotiate licensing on a national basis, so Intel will be able to launch slowly but with no issues if they do so in cities were the rights have already been negotiated.

After 2011's failed launch of Google TV, which was supposed to be Intel's chance to get their processors into more living rooms, the company has decided to try it on their own. "Intel was tired of everyone doing a half-assed Google TV so it's going to do it themselves and do it right," says the source.

Intel's plan is for a set-top box and subscription streaming TV service. The service would include traditional channels but also include streaming service like Redbox's new movie and TV show catalog.

In addition to their pirated movies list, TorrentFreak has also released a list of the most illegally downloaded TV shows.

HBO's blockbuster 'Game of Thrones' beat out last year's champ "Dexter" by a significant margin although both shows saw huge amounts of downloads per episode.

At 4.28 million downloads per episode, Game of Thrones topped the list, with TF noting that most of the downloads came from outside of the U.S. HBO has infamously not made their shows available outside of the U.S. in a timely manner, nor is there access to HBO Go, the on-demand streaming service.

Check the rest of the list here:

Following a pay cut this year after a rough 2011, Netflix will double CEO Reed Hasting's salary for 2013.

The exec will now make $4 million, half in cash and half in options which could become much more valuable than cash if the company's stock improves in the future.

In 2011, the company attempted unsuccessfully to split their DVD and streaming operations while raising the price on consumers. Additionally, subscriber growth stagnated. The backlash was humongous and the company's stock fell from over $300 per share to as low as $60 per share in just a matter of months. The Board of Directors cut Hastings' salary from $3.5 million in 2010 to $2 million.

Besides Hastings, CFO David Wells' salary was raised slightly to $1.1 million.

As is their annual tradition, TorrentFreak has posted a list of the most pirated movies in the year 2012.

Somewhat surprisingly, the most pirated film was 'Project X,' followed closely by the latest 'Mission Impossible.'

TF collects data for the list via several sources, most notably public and some private torrent trackers and includes all versions of the films, including cams all the way to Blu-rays. Obviously, the site cannot include figures from every possible source, so the list includes estimates.

Outside of the top spot, there were little other surprises on the list.

Check it here:

Apple has agreed to drop Samsung's recent Galaxy S III Mini from its ongoing patent-infringement lawsuit against the company.

The tech giant will withdraw the smartphone from the case as Samsung has made it clear that they will not sell the device in the United States, instead choosing to sell it in Europe and Asia and parts of Africa.

Apple won a case in the nation back in August against Samsung, being awarded $1.04 billion for years of infringement on a number of devices including phones and tablets.

A second case is scheduled for trial in 2014 over separate patents.

The filing reads: "We have withdrawn [the Mini] given Samsung's representation that it is not making, using, selling, offering to sell or importing that product into the U.S."

Pinterest, the popular virtual pinboard, has received its first lawsuit.

Theodore F. Schroeder of Ocean City, N.J., has sued the site this week, claiming misappropriation, unjust enrichment and breach of fiduciary duty against early investor Brian Cohen.

Schroeder's attorney had this to say: "The bottom line is that it's illegal to steal an idea for your own benefit without regard to the originator of that idea. Here, Mr. Cohen joined an existing enterprise in which Mr Schroeder had a majority interest, and then took without permission or right Mr. Schroeder's ideas, concepts, web application and technology."

Pinterest was quick to respond: "The lawsuit against Pinterest is baseless and we will fight it aggressively."

The plaintiff alleges that he worked with Cohen in 2007 and 2008 on a start-up called Rendezvoo that eventually became a major foundation of Pinterest. Rendezvoo was "a Web site where people meet to share opinions, views, items and tastes on a variety of subjects -- product, services, events, politics, economics -- nearly anything of human interest."

Check the suit in its entirety here: Pinterest Sued by Former Business Partner of Early Investor

Security firm McAfee Labs has released their annual "Threat Predictions" report this week, giving some insight into the malware world into 2013.

Perhaps most interestingly from the report was the suggestion that attacks made by hacktivist group "Anonymous" will decline in the new year.

Additionally, the report predicts "a rise in the frequency and sophistication of mobile malware, and a rise in large-scale attacks that aim to cause as much destruction as possible," says Ars.

Into 2013, McAfee says hacktivism will be conducted by "homogeneous, politically-motivated groups" rather than the current mix of attacks by different hackers with different motivations: "Sympathizers of Anonymous are suffering. Too many uncoordinated and unclear operations have been detrimental to its reputation. Added to this, the disinformation, false claims, and pure hacking actions will lead to the movement's being less politically visible than in the past. Because Anonymous' level of technical sophistication has stagnated and its tactics are better understood by its potential victims, the group's level of success will decline. However, we could easily imagine some short-lived spectacular actions due to convergence between hacktivists and antiglobalization supporters, or hacktivists and ecoterrorists."

Fujitsu has joined in the group of companies claiming Windows 8 demand frankly, sucks.

President Masami Yamamoto said consumer demand for the new operating system has been "weak" and its own computer sales have been affected by the lackluster response.

The company had initially expected PC shipments to reach seven million units, but has now been revised lower to just over six million.

In recent weeks, Acer and Asus both made similar remarks, claiming the OS had not sparked PC sales as expected. Asus' CFO David Chang went as far as to say "demand for Windows 8 is not that good right now."

Asus and Acer are two of the five largest PC makers in the world, so the news is certainly at least somewhat troubling for Microsoft.

A Chinese court has ruled Apple must pay a tiny penalty to eight writers.

The writers, along with two companies, had accused Apple of allowing their work to be made available for distribution through Apple's online store without their permission.

Beijing's No. 2 Intermediate People's Court ruled that the writer's copyrights had been violated, but the award was far less than the $1.9 million the writers were seeking.

Apple had very little to say except to say that they "take copyright infringement complaints very seriously" and may consider an appeal.

Ouya, the Android-based gaming console, will begin shipping to developers in the next few days.

The console, which was one of Kickstarter's highest-funded projects at almost $9 million and over 60,000 backers, will ship to 1200 developers that paid $699 to get an early dev console and the ability to code games.

Ouya requires that games must be free for users to download, but developers can offer full-game upgrades, in-game purchases or even monthly subscriptions.

"There's a lot of focus today on the mobile and web platform. It's easier to develop games for those platforms so the television costs a lot of money, you have to work with established players in the space and I've been trying to figure out how do we get them back to it," added Ouya founder and CEO Julie Uhrman. "Anybody that wants to develop a game for television, we allow them to do this."

The Ouya is tiny, has a Tegra 3 processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, HDMI-out, B/G/N Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, Android 4.0 and a USB port. Additionally, the console has support for four controllers.

Instagram has denied reports that its service saw a massive 25 percent hit on traffic and users.

Earlier this week, the NY Post reported that the image sharing company saw tough backlash over its ToS changes and usership fell 25 percent.

It cited figures from AppData that showed that Instagram had lost 4 million daily active users during the week that ended on Christmas.

Instagram, now owned by Facebook, was quick to respond: "This data is inaccurate. We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram."

The service was recently hit with a class action lawsuit over the controversial changes to its terms of service. In its revised ToS, Instagram implied that it would sell user's uploaded photos without compensation and also forced users to waive their rights to any class action lawsuit. The backlash was so swift that CEO Kevin Systrom had to publicly backtrack, and some of the language was removed.

According to Topeka Capital analyst Brian White, iPad Mini demand is off the charts in China.

Apple launched the tablet recently via a "soft" launch.

White says recent retail checks in China and Hong Kong revealed demand is so high that supply has become short in the nations. Apple recently opened two new retail stores in HK and three more in China to help with new iOS device launches.

The analyst says the device is sold out everywhere, and easily outselling the fourth-generation full-sized iPad, which has a higher price tag.

Finally, the analyst says the iPhone 5 has overtaken the Galaxy S III as the most popular smartphone, adding fuel to the ongoing war between the two companies.

The MTA has unveiled a new smartphone app for subway travelers that will reveal real-time arrival times for the nation's largest subway system.

For now, the app will be live for seven of the most popular trains of the subway, which has 24 different lines.

Dubbed "Subway Time," the app is available first for iOS with Android and Windows versions coming later via third-party developers.

The app provides real-time arrival times for the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and Shuttle lines.

In to the future, the L and 7 lines will be receiving the same treatment. Other lines still require "updated signals yoked to centralized computers able to transmit location and speed data for every train in motion," says the WSJ.

The NYC subway currently has 5.5 million daily riders and the app will cover about 1.8 million of those.

According to ePrice, Sony will unveil their new Xperia Z flagship at CES in two weeks.

The phone will feature a quad-core processor, a 5-inch screen and 1080p resolution.

Rumors of a 1080p Sony device have been around for months, as the company hopes to compete with the latest from HTC, LG and even Motorola.

Fully dubbed the Xperia Z L36H, the phone will also allegedly feature a 13MP rear camera, the Snapdragon S4 processor and an Adreno 320 GPU for smooth gameplay.

Furthermore, the device will include 2GB of RAM and a microSD slot, a feature not seen on Google's latest Nexus.

LG is seeking an injunction on Samsung tablet sales in Korea, the home country of both companies.

The tablet in question is the Galaxy Note 10.1, and LG has cited alleged patent infringements relating to the LCD panels used by the device.

"Through this action, LG Display seeks to completely stop the sale, manufacture and importation of the infringing Samsung product," LG Display added.

Outside of the injunction, the company is also seeking damages of "1 billion won ($933,000) per day in the event of continued non-compliance."

The battle between the companies extends back to September when LG filed suit against Samsung over seven patents relating to OLED technology. Samsung shot back claiming LG stole Samsung OLED researchers even though they were under NDA contracts.

According to MetroStore Scanner, the Windows 8 Store has surpassed a new milestone.

Launched in late October, the operating system now has 35,000 native apps in its Store, built for the Modern UI. On launch day, the number was closing in on 10,000.

In just the last 35 days, the Store has seen over 14,500 new apps, showing a strong acceleration of 415 apps per day.

22,000 of the apps are available in the U.S., adds the research firm.

At the current rate, Windows 8 should hit 50,000 apps by the first of February.

The Chinese government has passed a new law that will require all citizens to identify themselves with ID when signing up for Internet and mobile phone services. Users most also post content under their own names.

Officials for the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress say the rules will help protect personal information and also 'safeguard public interests.'

China is already infamous for its "Great Firewall," in which the Internet is highly censored, blocking pornography and gambling sites while also blocking social media like Twitter and Facebook. China has 550 million Internet users, the most in the world, but a low saturation given the nation has 1.3 billion inhabitants.

The new rules should help the government crack down even harder on bloggers or site owners who post content that is not "acceptable," including any dissent of the party.

Recently, the party's image took a hit after activists posted information on officials who "maintained extramarital affairs, snapped up property and luxury items and covered up allegations of wrongdoing by family members," says BBG.

Earlier this month, RIM settled with rival Nokia over a patent dispute relating to smartphones.

The company settled with the agreement to make a "one-time" payment and then on-going payments.

We have learned today, via an SEC filing, that the one-time upfront payment was $65 million,or 50 million euro.

Reads the filing (via ATD): "On December 21, 2012, Nokia and RIM announced that they have entered into a new patent license agreement. The agreement will result in the settlement of all patent litigation between the companies and Nokia's dismissal of all pending actions in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany. The financial structure of the agreement includes a lump sum EUR50m (approximately $65m) one-time payment, which has been recorded in the Company's consolidated statement of operations in the third quarter of fiscal 2013."

While the royalties figure was not disclosed, most expect the annual payment to reach somewhere in the $40-60 million range.

Barnes & Noble and Microsoft have announced today that major publisher Pearson has purchased a stake in their joint Nook Media division.

To secure distribution, Pearson will pay $89.5 million for a five percent stake.

It appears that Pearson taking the stake will help the publisher "gain favorable distribution for its education books" within the popular digital world of the Nook.

"With this investment, we have entered into a commercial agreement with Nook Media that will allow our two companies to work closely together in order to create a more seamless and effective experience for students. It is another example of our strategy of making our content and services broadly available to students and faculty through a wide range of distribution partners," read Pearson's statement.

The deal comes on the heels of B&N's warning to investors that its holiday sales "will be below expectations and that the Nook business will not meet the company's prior projection for fiscal year 2013."

Microsoft will now have a reduced 16.8 share of the company, as will B&N, down to 78.2 percent.

Facebook is scrambling to fix another bug.

Poke, the company's new standalone app that allows you to "poke" a friend with a message, photo or video and set the amount of time they can keep the message for (10 seconds or less).

While the message is supposed to self destruct, a security glitch was discovered where any and all videos could later be extracted and saved.

"We are addressing this issue now. We should have a fix pushed shortly," said a hurried Facebook spokesperson.

It appears the Poke was caching videos in a temporary folder on iOS devices, a file that did not delete when the message itself did. Anyone with a third-party file manager for the iOS device could then plug their phone/tablet into their computer and quickly download the file.

According to TF, copyright holders have asked Google to remove over 50 million links to allegedly infringing webpages in the last year, alone.

As of this month, Google is now processing 500,000 supposedly infringing links every day, with the number increasing daily. As with other major sites, if Google receives a valid DMCA request it must remove said content. Google does so transparently, publishing all takedown requests online.

The most active copyright holder sending notices is unsurprisingly, the RIAA, who sent 7.8 million takedown notices this year.

Also unsurprising, were the sites that Google received the most notices for. FilesTube topped the list, with 2,273,280 links. That being said, FilesTube has over 200,000,000 links on Google, currently.

The MPAA had their usual stance: "There is a staggering amount of copyright infringement taking place every day online and much of it is facilitated by Google, as their own data shows. We couldn't agree more with Google that this data shows that our current system is not working – for creators, or for Google. But we can't lose sight of the fact that it also confirms the important role that Google has to play in helping curb the theft of creative works while protecting an Internet that works for everyone."

Kim Dotcom will hold next month's Mega launch presser at his mansion in New Zealand.

The infamous founder of Megaupload says the conference will be "like no other." He added: "You know me. I can't do small."

January 20th will see the launch of Mega, which will be a new cyber locker that features the same basic file sharing principles as Megaupload but will include better encryption and social features like an email service.

Originally slated to be hosted at Me.ga, the government of Gabon pulled the plug on the site last month to protect their relationship with nations like the U.S. forcing Dotcom to look elsewhere.

The URL is now found at mega.co.nz.

Expect a press conference like no other. You know me. I can't do small.

-- Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) December 27, 2012

The NYPD (New York Police Department) says the annual crime rate is set to increase for the first time in two decades.

As of this week, there have been 108,432 major crimes throughout the boroughs, up 3484 compared to the same time last year.

Most dramatically, according to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, thefts involving Apple products (like iPhones and iPads) were up 3890 year-over-year, a massive jump.

"If you just took away the jump in Apple, we'd be down for the year," added Marc La Vorgna, the mayor's press secretary. "The proliferation of people carrying expensive devices around is so great. It's something that's never had to be dealt with before."

The trend of Apple hardware thefts outpacing other crime has been ongoing for years now.

Thirteen years after its launch, Sony has stopped shipping PlayStation 2 consoles to retailers in Japan.

Launched on March 4, 2000 in the nation, the console has sold over 150 million units globally, making it the most popular system of all-time.

In Japan itself, Sony has sold 22 million PS2s.

Unlike in other nations, Japan was still seeing new PS2 releases, and Square Enix has even announced that the upcoming Final Fantasy 11: Seekers of Adoulin expansion will reach the PS2 as a new release, next year.

Sony is widely expected to announce the PS4 next year for release over the holidays.

According to a recent survey, Amazon remains the best website for online shopping.

On the opposite end, "flash" sale sites Gilt and RueLaLa scored the worst in satisfaction, while JC Penney saw the biggest drop of any retailer that also has brick-and-mortar stores.

The survey was the annual ForeSee's Holiday E-Retail Satisfaction Index. "The importance of satisfying them and giving a great consumer experience is going to pay back huge dividends in terms of profitability for these retailers," added Larry Freed, president and CEO of ForeSee.

Amazon kept its crown for the eight straight year, with an 88 out of 100 rating. LLBean came in second, at 85/100. On the low end was Gilt at 72. JC Penney fell from 83 to 78 year-over-year.

Notably, Apple fell again, to 80 from 83, while computer maker Dell fell to 77 from 80. Freed says Apple's site has become harder to navigate as continues to increase its product line, and I'm sure there are little who would not agree.

According to Digitimes, Mac Minis will be the first Apple computers built again in the U.S.

Earlier rumors had stated that the upcoming Mac Pro would be the first, but honestly both devices make sense.

CEO Tim Cook stated earlier this month that some production would be moved back to the U.S., with the company investing between $100-$200 million to do so. Foxconn has also confirmed they will be expanding their operations to the U.S., suggesting they will run Apple's new Texas-based manufacturing lines.

Some components, like Apple's A5 and A6 processors, are already built by Samsung here in the U.S. but all finished products come from China.

The move will add 200 jobs for Americans, say industry sources.

Billionaire Mark Cuban had some tech questions thrown at him during a recent Reddit AMA session and one particular answer stood out.

During the AMA, someone asked what gadgets he's currently using: "I have a MacBook Air, but am trying the new Acer with Windows 8. I really, really like Windows 8 on my phone. I have 2 phones. First is Samsung, the 2nd was an iPhone 5. The new Nokia with windows replaced my iPhone 5."

When asked to elaborate a bit on why he dumped the iPhone, Cuban said: "It crushes the iPhone 5. Not even close."

The iPhone 5 has obviously destroyed Nokia's devices in actual sales but Nokia's device has a larger screen, wireless charging and some great software such as Pureview and CityLens. It was an interesting answer by Cuban.

Check the rest of his AMA here: Reddit

According to a recent filing, Apple CEO Tim Cook's overall compensation will be $4.17 million this year, down significantly from last year.

Last year, as part of his promotion to CEO (and as a way to retain him), Cook was granted 1 million restricted shares worth about $510 million today.

Those shares will vest completely in 10 years from granting, with half available after five years.

As a base salary, Cook earned $1.4 million this year, up from $900,000 last year but still many times lower than the CEOs of rival companies.

Apple's Compensation Committee said the size of last year's grant was large enough that they did not vote for another this year.

Poor Tim.

Apple's oft-rumored 'iWatch' smart watch is back in the news again, this time with a new partner.

The latest rumor, via the usual supply chain sources, claim Apple and Intel are building a Bluetooth 4.0-enabled smart watch for release next year.

Most importantly for potential buyers, the watch will sync perfectly with iPhone, iPad and iPod devices.

The device will have a 1.5-inch OLED display with ITO coating, leading to less glare and smudging. The device would also have some sort of version of Siri.

It is unclear what place Intel would have in the equation, unless Apple decides to use Intel's upcoming energy-efficient mobile Celeron processors.

Samsung has confirmed that the original phablet, the Galaxy Note, will be receiving Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, along with the Premium Suite upgrade.

Owners will be very happy as the Premium Suite comes with "Multi Window," the ability to do multiple tasks on the same screen at the same time with no screen transitions, among other upgrades seen on the Note II.

Jelly Bean, Google's latest and greatest, will let Note owners access Google Now, the personal assistant that sends notifications based on your browsing history, your GPS location, and your emails. For example, Google Now will send updates on traffic when you are at home and it is time to be going to work or tell you the score of your favorite team's recent (or even ongoing) game.

It is unclear when the suite will be made available to Note owners.

According to Flurry, Android and iOS devices saw record amounts of activations this week on Christmas.

Flurry uses a database of 260,000 apps to "detect" the amount of new activations daily.

Overall activations jumped to 17.4 million, a massive jump compared to an average day the week before, which saw 4 million activations.



Compared to last year, the numbers were equally significant, as Christmas 2011 saw the previous record of 6.8 million device activations.

App downloads increased 112 percent on Christmas, setting a record, as well.

According to Senior Director of Windows Phone Apps Team Todd Brix, developer popularity for the company's mobile operating system does not seem to be an issue.

Microsoft certified and subsequently published 75,000 apps and games this year for Windows Phone, while approving over 300,000 app updates.

Additionally, Microsoft added Paypal and Ailipay as payment options, and doubled the number of carriers that accept carrier billing for their store. The last note is very important for the company as studies have shown that Windows Phone users are more likely to purchase paid apps when using carrier billing over traditional credit card payments.

Overall, 54 apps were downloaded per phone.

Concludes Brix: "We exit 2012 with a new foundation firmly in place, a huge expansion in developer opportunity, and a great new product in Windows Phone 8, which is receiving acclaim by both industry and consumers. There has never been a better time to develop for Windows Phone. If you haven't already, we'd like to invite you to visit the Dev Center to download the new SDK and for those of you who have made the journey with us, I want to say thank you on behalf of the entire Windows Phone team. Your feedback drives us and your apps inspire us."

Marvell has said today it is looking to completely overturn the $1.17 billion jury verdict handed down this week for patent infringement.

The jury has ruled that Marvell must pay Carnegie Mellon University $1.17 billion for infringing on patents, with the award being the third largest ever in a patent case, even beating out Apple's recent victory over Samsung for smartphone and tablet patents in the U.S.

Carnegie Mellon University had accused Marvell of infringing patents related to disk drives used in all types of computing products. The patents relate to technology used for "noise predictive detection," tech that increases accuracy in retrieving data from said drives. Marvell sold "billion of chips" using the patented technology without a license.

This morning, Marvell says it does not use the technology at issue and has "very strong grounds for appeal" if it must get to that point. Regardless, the award is likely to be reduced significantly, say many experts in the litigation field, as $1.17 billion was the exact number CMU had requested.

In regards to their current financials, Marvell says: "In assessing the impact of this jury verdict on its financial statements, Marvell will review the verdict, evaluate the post-trial motions, and evaluate the likelihood of a successful appeal."

Foxconn has purchased a large 8.88 percent stake in Woodman Labs, the company behind the popular extreme sports GoPro cameras.

The cameras, which are small but feature high-end specs, are often strapped onto the bodies of skydivers, skiers, bikers and surfers to capture fast motion HD footage.

Foxconn, best known for being a main manufacturer of iOS devices, purchased the stake for $200 million, valuing the company at $2.25 billion.

"GoPro and Foxconn share a vision of the future where content capture, creation and sharing will become an increasingly important form of communication," says founder Nicholas Woodman, who is just 36.

Adds Foxconn founder and CEO Terry Gou (who will get a seat on the Board): "The first time I saw Nick Woodman, I immediately knew he was an outstanding entrepreneur who has the caliber to be very successful in this business."

According to a new report by Mintel, sales of MP3 players fell 22 percent in the UK year-over-year, a very strong decline even for an industry on its last legs.

Sales fell by £110 million to £381 million.

Mintel goes as far as to say that sales will be half of that by 2017, with a worst case scenario seeing the industry decline 90 percent to just £25 million in the same time frame.

The decline of the industry has mirrored the rise of smartphones, which have all the same capabilities of the MP3 players but can also make phone calls and access the Internet via 3G/4G when not in an area with Wi-Fi. Additionally, mobile apps for services like Google Music, Spotify, Pandora One and Last.fm have made it easier to bring massive collections of music around without actually using any of your phone's storage space.

Adds Samuel Gee, a technology analyst at Mintel: "It is impossible to talk about the current PMP (portable media player) market without extensive reference to smartphones. The devices have directly contributed to the sharp decline in the value of PMP sales."

Just like they did last year, Google has announced it will extend free Gmail voice domestic calls.

The extension, which will also be for Canadian users, means Gmail users can make free domestic phone calls using the Gmail widget service for at least another year.

Google introduced voice and video chat to Google Talk in 2008 and launched the voice calling in 2010. The service was only supposed to be free until summer of 2011 but Google keeps extending it.

Says Google: "Many of you call phones from Gmail to easily connect with friends and family. If you're in the US and Canada, you'll continue to be able to make free domestic calls through 2013. Plus, in most countries, you can still call the rest of the world from Gmail at insanely low rates."

Gmail is one of the best alternatives to Skype, especially at the price.

Everybody pirates.

According to new data, it appears even Hollywood studio employees openly download and share unauthorized copies of movies, games and music.

Employees at Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Disney, Sony Pictures and 20th Century Fox have been caught pirating, while at work, while their companies pay the MPAA to fight the file sharers.

The data, which comes from TF and BitTorrent monitoring company Scaneye, shows films and other media being downloaded by users with static IP addresses registered to the major studios.

Check some screenshots here, from the source:

A federal jury has ruled against large chip-maker Marvell Technology.

The jury has ruled that Marvell must pay Carnegie Mellon University $1.17 billion for infringing on patents.

If it ultimately stands, the award will be the third largest ever in a patent case, even beating out Apple's recent victory over Samsung for smartphone and tablet patents in the U.S.

The University had accused Marvell of infringing patents related to disk drives used in all types of computing products. The patents relate to technology used for "noise predictive detection," tech that increases accuracy in retrieving data from said drives. Marvell sold "billion of chips" using the patented technology without a license.

Marvell currently has a market value of about $4 billion and has $2 billion in cash and investments.

The company plans to appeal if the judge does not lessen the award during post-trial motions.

Netflix has announced they will add "social features" to the popular service in 2013, after the President signs a recent bill into law.

Earlier this week, Congress passed the bill which will remove restrictions that formerly prevented rental companies from sharing customer's rental history.

"We are pleased that the Senate moved so quickly after the House," says Netflix. "We plan to introduce social features for our US members in 2013, after the president signs it."

Netflix has long wanted to be able to offer customers the ability to link their Netflix accounts to their Facebook to share movie recommendations and their watched movies.

In fact, Netflix users in Latin America and Canada have had such ability for over a year, since their was no similar law in those nations. The 1988 Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA) prohibited companies from disclosing "personally identifiable information," which includes rental history for video rental companies.

Now amended, Netflix will be able ask customers for "written consent," (through an e-disclosure) to share information.

Samsung has let the news 'slip' via their Flickr page.

The electronics company will unveil a whole new "Smart Hub" for their Smart TVs and next year's CES event in Last Vegas.

Smart Hub is Samsung Smart TV's dedicated contents platform where viewers can enjoy various contents such as real time broadcasting TV programs, on-demand movies, apps, and photos. The platform changed the design of background image and simplified the user interface to better serve the customers.

The company has posted three photos showing off a new background design and a more simple UI than previous iterations.

Microsoft has announced the locations for its six new retail stores.

The company opened 51 stores this year, and will open six new ones early in 2013.

Into the new year, the new locations will be built here:

The Shops at La Cantera, San Antonio, Texas.
Dadeland Mall, Miami, Fla.
Beachwood Place, Beachwood, Ohio.
Westfield San Francisco Centre, San Francisco.
City Creek Center, Salt Lake City.
St. Louis Galleria, St. Louis.

PayPal has banned PRQ, the ISP begun by Pirate Bay founders, from its services.

After three years of partnership, PayPal froze the assets of the company for 180 days and has effectively shut them down.

The ISP was started in 2004 with the motto that it is 'bullet-proof,' meaning if the site is legal in Sweden, it will host and defend it.

Because of their defense of sites like The Pirate Bay, PRQ is raided at least once per year with authorities looking to shut down sites used to share unauthorized files. PRQ is even infamous for accepting cash as a form of payment for companies that need to leave no paper trail.

Without PayPal, it appears that PRQ will need to find other methods of payment from its sites, with Bitcoins being accepted now while they work on their Visa/Mastercard merchant account.

"That was it for us, that made us decide to discontinue PayPal forever. It's sad that PayPal decided to f*ck us after three years of service," PRQ concluded (via Freak).

The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation, the company behind Wikipedia, had an operating budget of just $27 million in the last fiscal year.

Operating as the only non-profit within the world's biggest 40 websites, Wikimedia raised $38.5 million to pay its expenses during the year.

Wikipedia sees 19 billion page views per month, but its budget is just a fraction of the other companies on top of the list, like YouTube, Facebook and Baidu.

For the fiscal year ended June 30th, 2012, Wikimedia received $35 million in donations from 1.1 million donors. Donors who supported with over $1000 was small enough to fit just one page of the company's report.

You can read the full report here (it's worth it, it's only 3 pages): Wikimedia Annual Report

Whether by coding or by glitch, it appears the Scan and Match feature of Google Music is replacing your explicit music with 'clean' versions.

Scan and Match tags your music that you are uploading to Google Music, and allows you to stream the files from their own catalog, thus saving you hours (or days) of uploading time and bandwidth.

Many users have begun complaining, however, that their tracks are being defaulted to censored versions, which remove cursing or other "vulgar" language.

The same issue hit Apple iTunes users when they company implemented a similar matching tech, infuriating users who prefer to have their music as they like it and not controlled by others.

Google has not said whether they will amend the technology.

According to an Iranian news publication, the powerful worm dubbed 'Stuxnet' is back.

The outlet has reported another cyber attack, this time on industries located in the country's south.

The report quoted provincial civil defense chief Ali Akbar Akhavan who said the virus hit a power plant among other industries. Akhavan also noted that this team of experts were able to "successfully stop" the worm from causing damage.

In the past years, Stuxnet and other worms, such as 'Flame' have been aimed at Iran's oil and nuclear programs, with varying degrees of success although some have certainly set back the nation's programs months.

China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has posted new astonishing numbers today about the nation.

As of November 30th, China now has 1.104 billion mobile phone users, an increase of 118 million from the beginning of the year.

At 1.1 billion, 82 percent of China's massive population now uses a mobile phone, with 220 million now using 3G smartphones. China has 167 million iOS and Android phone users, compared to 181 million in the U.S., with the nation expected to overcome the U.S. next year.

Moving away from phones, home broadband users increased by 24.03 million and mobile internet users increased 111 million.

For the first 11 months of the year, total mobile communications revenue in China totaled 724.53 billion yuan ($116 billion USD), 11 percent year-over-year growth.

Last night, some Netflix fans were met with bad news; their streaming service was not available to them on Christmas Eve.

The issue was thanks to Amazon Web Services, which is the massive cloud hosting service owned and operated by, you guessed it, Amazon.

Issues were stemming from the AWS center in Virginia, the same center that went down earlier this year causing downtime for thousands of small businesses.

As of this morning, however, streaming is back to normal, with Amazon having fixed whatever bugs were plaguing them.

Special thanks to our awesome members for being patient. We're back to normal streaming levels. We hope everyone has a great holiday.

-- Netflix US (@netflix) December 25, 2012

While the world has generally moved towards full-touch devices, it appears the RIM will make some full-QWERTY keypad models available into the future.

On January 30th, RIM will unveil the first BlackBerry 10 handsets, with the Z10 widely expected to be the first.

This week, thanks to CNB, we have seen a picture of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 N-Series, which includes the QWERTY seen in previous models.

The device looks like the Bold 9900 but with a larger touch screen.

Check it here:

The Kickstarter-backed 'POP' device charger has been re-instated, after Apple lightened up on their Lightning adapter guidelines.

Last week, the company had to kill the project and return the funds to their 1000 backers after Apple told them they could not use the new 30-pin Lightning interface used for charging new iPhones and iPads. Additionally, the charger uses micro-USB, making it ideal for consumers who have both Android and iOS devices, or other phones.

Project founder Jamie Siminoff wrote this to backers:

As you know on Thursday we sent you an update that because of Apple's rules around Lightning we would be canceling POP. The story got A LOT of news and reactions, way more than we could have ever imagined. In fact it became such big news that 24 hours after we posted Apple changed their guidelines for Lightning.

It was an incredible turn of events for us. We never could have imagined that we would be able to change Apple's rules.

Last month, Mozilla Engineering Manager Benjamin Smedberg announced that the company was killing off 64-bit nightly builds of the popular Firefox browser.

At the time, the engineer said there was "significant negative feedback," but it appears that has been revised as Mozilla is re-instating the builds.

A new post, called 'Update on turning off 64-bit Windows builds,' the engineer said the builds are back due to the limitations of 32-bit, with 4GB RAM limits that can kill a computer that is trying to keep hundreds of tabs open.

Smedberg now says we will "continue to build win64 Nightly builds and updates on the nightly channel. Users who need the 64-bit builds will have to download it after the migration point (date TBD)."

More information here: Mozilla Firefox 64-bit discussion

Huawei has decided that bigger is better.

The Chinese company has introduced its new Ascend Mate smartphone with a massive 6.1-inch 1080p Android phone.

Officially, the phone will be unveiled at CES but it appears exec Richard Yu was a bit impatient with the new flagship.

The device has a 1.8GHz HiSilicon K3V3 quad-core chip, a 4,000mAh battery and a thin form factor at 9.9mm thick.

For fans, Yu also revealed that the display is LTPS (low temperature polysilicon) with 361ppi.

Intel has a full lineup ready for the new year.

The company, which has been looking to improve its place in the mobile world dominated by Samsung, Qualcomm and Nvidia, will release four new mobile Celeron processors based on the latest Ivy Bridge architecture.

Firstly, the company will replace their entry-level Celeron 800 and B800 series chips with two new ultra-low voltage processors, the 1.5 GHz 1007U and the 1.8 GHz 1037U, "both of which arrive with a TDP of 17 watts and support for DDR3-1333 memory," says Tom's.

More powerful models, the 1.8 GHz 1000M and the 2.1 GHz 1020M "are rated at 35 watts and are combined with DDR3-1600 memory."

To keep consumption low, the U processors will run a clocked down GPU, which runs at 350 MHz/1000 MHz.

All chips are dual-core with Hyper Threading.

In October, Motorola gave a roadmap for its Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) plans.

Now, some lucky owners will finally get the update for their devices. If you are a RAZR or RAZR Maxx device owner, expect an OTA update to Android 4.1.2 starting this week.

That being said, some users have already reported issues with the download itself, such as server hiccups when trying to download it to their phones.

Many users are just not seeing the update yet, and Verizon Wireless hasn't officially posted it on their site yet.

Keep updated here: Forums

According to normally accurate Macotakara, Apple is preparing its fifth-generation full-sized iPad for launch in March.

The new device will be even thinner and lighter than the previous models, at 4mm smaller height and 2mm smaller deepness.

Design will be switched to have the tablet look more like the recently launched iPad Mini - which offers a somewhat redesigned bezel and sleek ergonomics along with black/slate colorway.

Current fourth-gen iPads clock in at 241.2 mm by 185.7 mm by 9.4 mm, and are already quite thin.

New iPad owners may be upset by this as the fourth-gen was just released in November, offering upgrades from the third-gen model released in the Spring.

The same report offers that Apple is preparing an iPad Mini 2 with Retina Display (2048 x 1536) resolution.

The estate of the late Apple founder paid to finally resolve a dispute that had Steve Jobs' super yacht impounded in Amsterdam.

'Venus,' as the ship is named, had been impounded by designer Philippe Starck, over a dispute about payments.

"The Venus is no longer impounded, we have found a solution," says Gerard Moussault, a lawyer for the Jobs estate. "A security deposit was paid into a bank account, but I cannot say for how much."

At 70-meters, the vessel cost 100 million euros to build, with Starck fighting over 3 million euros he was still owed for his contribution to its glorious design.

Jobs never got to use the yacht, as it was completed one year after his death. Widow Laurene Powell Jobs and their three children Reed, Erin and Eve will become captains of the ship once it reaches the States.

As expected, the interior features some Apple products, with the bridge control panel being made up of seven iMacs.

According to the WSJ, Acer is ramping up to launch a $99 Android tablet next year.

The tablet will feature a 7-inch screen, a 1024x600 resolution, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and other similar specs to the Amazon Kindle Fire or B&N Nook Color.

While Amazon sells their tablet for $139, Acer will look to take global share (especially in developing nations) with a $99 price tag. In fact, the device may not even make it to the U.S., despite the company submitting the tablet to the FCC for approval.

Dubbed the Iconia B1, Acer will directly compete with Chinese "white-box" tablets that are generically built and include older versions of Android but sell for $99 or less. "White-box" tablet makers are expected to sell 60 million of the devices next year, making the opportunity a very real one for Acer.

In the U.S., the major competitors are Amazon's Kindle Fire, Google's speedy $199 Nexus 7 and Apple's beautiful but pricey iPad Mini at $329.

It took a few weeks, but Facebook has been hit with its first civil suit over the controversial terms of service (ToS) changes to its Instagram platform.

Facebook was quick to respond: "We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously."

In its revised ToS, Instagram implied that it would sell user's uploaded photos without compensation and also forced users to waive their rights to any class action lawsuit. The backlash was so swift that CEO Kevin Systrom had to publicly backtrack, and some of the language was removed.

The revised ToS also states that if you do not agree with the terms, you can cancel your profile but must forfeit all rights to previous photos you shared. Reads the lawsuit: "In short, Instagram declares that 'possession is nine-tenths of the law and if you don't like it, you can't stop us.'"

Facebook is well known for caring little about user's privacy, stripping user's rights any chance they can get.

According to multiple sources, Nokia is building a Windows RT tablet for release early next year that could rival the Microsoft Surface.

The new Nokia tablet will have a 10.1-inch screen, HDMI and USB ports, 4G LTE, and a cover/keyboard similar to the TouchCover accessory for the Surface.

Supposedly, the cover is Nokia's main focus with the tablet, with everything else being pretty standard. The new cover will "envelop" the tab "like a book," clicking into place and also working as a kickstand and an external battery. Additionally, the cover will have two USB ports, making it similar to Asus' Transformer keyboards.

The tablet will have 10 hours battery life even without the cover, and it is unclear how much bonus life the cover gives.

Sources expect the tablet to launch at the upcoming MWC in February.

'Nintendo Power' has published its last issue this month, #285 dating back to 1988.

The issue is 96 pages and features a modern remake of the company's first-ever issue, which including the now iconic clay sculpture of Mario.

Created by artist Leslie Levings, the magazine asked the artist to pay homage to the original cover. Although she never owned an NES or a sub to Nintendo Power, she often visited friends' houses to be able to play.

Overall, the cover took the magazine and the sculptor six months to get right, with many sketches sent back and forth. The cover features Mario jumping on a goomba with Bowser menacing in the background, similar to the original but, well, "modern."

The mag is available on newsstands, now.

Rockstar Games has revealed some more screenshots for their upcoming GTA V game, revealing even more vehicles and animals.

The game, which is destined to be a blockbuster, will include multiple protagonists and an open world so large it is said it could fit the maps of San Andreas, GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption in it in their entirety.

With its new screenshots, the publishers have revealed that passenger jets are flyable vehicles, as well as submarines.

Another screenshot shows your character in diving equipment, on path to touch a massive great white shark.

(Screenshots via Rant)

According to recent figures from Kantar, Apple managed to see its highest ever smartphone market share in the U.S.

For the quarter ended in November, Apple took 53.3 percent share in the nation, thanks mainly to strong sales of the iPhone 5 and the newly discounted iPhone 4S.

In the Q3 2011, that number was 35.8 percent. Android fell to 41.9 percent from 52.9 percent in 2011.

"Apple has reached a major milestone in the U.S. by passing the 50 percent share mark for the first time, with further gains expected to be made during December," added Dominic Sunnebo, Kantar's global consumer insight director.

Across the pond, however, the numbers were not pretty for Apple. Samsung took a large 44.3 percent share, with Apple in second at 25.3 percent and HTC, Sony, and Nokia fighting it out for third.

Earlier this week, a New Zealand court has ruled on rescheduling the extradition hearing for Kim Dotcom.

The hearing has now been pushed to August 2013, the second such postponement since his arrest.

Dotcom was arrested earlier this year when the U.S. and other nations teamed together to take down Megaupload, at the time the largest cyberlocker on the planet, accounting for a significant portion of the entire planet's Internet traffic.

The trial, which was set for August 2012 before being pushed to March of next year, would have been for extradition to the U.S. The New Zealand High Court ruled the FBI must "provide Kim Dotcom's lawyers with more of the evidence they had collected against him before he could stand trial for extradition," says Ars.

Dotcom is currently free on bail and is working on the new MEGA service, set for launch next month.

Flickr, in an effort to reward new and existing users, will offer three free months to its Pro service.

Just by accepting the promo, you will be able to have unlimited uploads and viewing to your library.

Additionally, you will be given right to post to 60 different groups, as well as "high-resolution downloads of your original photos and unlimited uploads and plays of HD videos."

Yahoo has begun investing in their Flickr product after spending a large sum to acquire it years ago.

Get the promo here: http://www.flickr.com/holidaygift

The United States and Russia have signed a new agreement that will have the two countries joining up to fight against IP (intellectual property) violations.

Dubbed the "Intellectual Rights Protection Action Plan," Russia will shut down infringing websites and invest more in law enforcement including physical raids on accused violators, just like in the United States.

Additionally, Russia will establish a new law that could make ISPs liable for infringement depending on the circumstances.

The U.S., as expected, was excited with the move: "This step is particularly important in light of Russia's recent membership in the World Trade Organization and the application of the WTO agreement between us. Russia has made commendable progress in improving its regime, and the Action Plan signals a commitment to maintain that momentum to address IPR priorities."

Finally, the nations will share best practies and Russia may eventually adapt the U.S.' upcoming Copyright Alert System, which is a '6-strike' educational service for alleged pirates which eventually leads to penalties.

According to the WSJ, Google and Motorola are working on a new high-end device, codenamed 'X.'

The marquee phone will be unique and include the highest-end features to stand apart from existing phones, say the sources.

One example of a cutting-edge feature is a bendable screen, however, the company is said to have run into trouble on the suply-chain side.

Supposedly, the phone project is being led by Google Maps product manager Lior Ron. For the new phone, Motorola is said to have wanted the best phone camera and photo software yet, as well as better color saturation. The company also wanted easier ability for panaromic shots, however, the latest iPhone already incorporated such a feature and Samsung has greatly improved their photo software, as well, without the battery drain seen by the X phone in early prototypes.

Besides the bendable screen, Motorola wanted to use new ceramic material to make the X Phone stress resistant andgive it the ability to mold into new shapes.

The surprise blockbuster smash hit 'Gangnam Style' has hit 1 billion views on YouTube.

As of writing, the video now has 1.02 billion hits, making it far and away the most viewed video on the site, ever.

In late November, the video surpassed Justin Beiber's 'Baby,' which had long held the title.

"Psy's success is a great testament to the universal appeal of catchy music - and er, great equine dance moves," wrote Kevin Allocca, YouTube trends manager.

Check the video here:

According to an Asian-based report, Google will release a $99 Nexus 7 tablet eventually, undercutting even their own cheap price tags.

The popular tablet has a base model that costs $199, well below the hot-selling iPad Mini at $329 and on par with offerings from Amazon.

However, Google is aiming to price below $150, with a $99 tablet being the ultimate goal.

The cheaper Nexus 7 will be ready for launch in the Q2 2013, using component maker O-Film's touch-screen glass-glass film technology for a thinner and cheaper tablet.

Cnet speculates the first device will cost $129-149.

VEVO, the popular music video streaming site, has made its way to Roku set-top boxes.

Launched today, the app will allow set-top owners to watch individual videos or view a continuous stream of music videos "powered by its recommendations service."

There will also be various categories, including trending artists, the most popular songs, and different genres.

As with other Roku apps, you will need to activate the application at vevo.com/roku with an activation code, which will link your VEVO account and allow for playback of saved playlists and favorites.

VEVO has been working to expand their offerings, and recently launched on the Xbox and Boxee.

App analytics firm Distimo has reported today on some of the intricacies of the Apple App Store compared to the Google Play Store.

The Google Play Store is growing at a quicker rate than the Apple Store, however the latter still brings in substantially more revenue.

Over the course of the year, the Google Play Store has seen its revenue grow 51 percent in the 20 countries analyzed; Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the UK and the US.

In total revenue, the App Store saw $15 million in average daily revenue last month, compared to just $3.5 million for the Google Store.

69 percent of the revenues came from in-app purchases, which has quickly moved to the most popular form of casual gaming releases instead of the standard upfront fee.

Verizon has expanded its LTE service, again.

The company has added 29 new markets to the fast mobile broadband network, with many West Coast cities getting access.

After the move, Verizon has now made the LTE available to 470 markets, covering 250 million people.

The carrier has been besting its rivals, most notably AT&T, which has coverage in 125 cities.

Despite having the fastest network, AT&T has been slower with their rollout, expecting to reach Verizon's coverage levels by next year.

According to a leaked ad, the first BlackBerry 10 phone will be called the Z10.

The company will officially unveil the device on January 30th at an event in NYC.

BlackBerry 10 is the company's first major overhaul of their operating system in years, and the company's answer to Android and iOS.

All features of the OS will be unveiled at the event, but we have seen many screenshots over the past week.

The ad:

Kodak, the imaging pioneer currently in bankruptcy, has sold its digital imaging patent portfolio for $525 million, a move that should help it emerge from bankruptcy in the new year.

The purchasing company is a consortium of 12 led by patent-holding company Intellectual Ventures and thepatent risk advisory firm RPX Corporation.

There are some notable names in the consortium, which are listed below:

Apple, Inc.
Research In Motion Limited
Google Inc.
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Adobe Systems Incorporated
HTC Corporation
Facebook, Inc.
Fujifilm Corporation
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Amazon Fulfillment Services, Inc.
Shutterfly, Inc.
Microsoft Corporation

Google has sold Motorola Mobility's TV set-top business for $2.35 billion.

The deal has been in the works ever since Google acquired the company earlier this year for $12.4 billion to take advantage of their patents and smartphone business.

Arris Group has purchased the business in a cash-and-stock deal. The company is a provider of high-speed Internet equipment.

Google has openly admitted its purchase of Motorola was mainly thanks to the company's extensive 17,000-strong mobile patent library.

While being outside of Google's realm, the set-top box business also proved to be a liability as TiVo is seeking billions in a patent lawsuit that is currently ongoing.

The deal was finally approved after Google said it would foot most of the bill if TiVo were to win. TiVo has already won over $1 billion from Verizon, Dish and others for similar lawsuits implying the final settlement could be in the $300-$500 million range.

According to RBC Capital Markets analyst Doug Freedman, Apple is already working on their iPad Mini sequel, just months after releasing the original.

The Mini was released at the beginning of November, but the alleged new device will hit in the Q1 2013.

Freedman says he believes the company will finally embrace an accelerated product release cycle to be able to better compete with rivals that can release a handful of devices in one year compared to just one iPhone, or iPad, for example.

The analyst learned of the new device after meeting with component makers in Asia and after talks with Texas Instruments.

If true, the new device will update the display to Retina, and likely add some RAM.

According to the latest rumors, Apple is indeed testing their HDTV in secret through Foxconn without any timetable for release.

The panels being tested are between 46-inches and 55-inches, say the sources.

Despite the internal testing, the sources say a 2013 launch is not as likely as some would like to believe, with Apple setting no timetable for release.

There have been rumors for years of the HDTV, which CEO Tim Cook recently called "more than a hobby." The rumored device will include a variant of the Mac OS X, a la carte channel selection and other smart device features.

Apple is likely waiting until they can rival Samsung Smart TVs before releasing a product that will likely be a game changer for the world's most valuable public company.

Game maker THQ has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, with its assets being sold to private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group for $60 million.

The company's stock fell 73 percent today to finish at $0.35 cents.

Last month, the company admitted it was seeking "strategic financing alternatives" as it bled cash.

Clearlake will acquire all of THQ's studios and all games in development. Additionally, the bankruptcy and sale will let the company "shed certain legacy obligations and emerge with the strong financial backing of a new owner with substantial experience in software and technology."

THQ is best known for its WWE wrestling games and the extremely popular "Saints Row" franchise.

Thanks to Chiphell we have the specs for Nvidia's upcoming Tegra 4 processor.

Codenamed 'Wayne,' the smartphone and tablet processor will feature the same quad-core setup as the Tegra 3 plus the fifth ninja 'battery saver' core.

The architecture itself will be a Cortex-A15, and the GPU will be "72-core," with 6 times the power of the current chips.

Furthermore, and most importantly, the Tegra 4 uses the 28nm manufacturing process, meaning battery life will be improved significantly.

Finally, the processor has support for USB 3.0, 4K video and resolutions up to 2,560 x 1,600.

In what is huge news for both companies, Apple has been denied in their request for a permanent sales injunction on Samsung products.

Apple had tried to get sales banned in the U.S. for 26 Samsung products including many popular Galaxy phones and tablets after winning a patent verdict in August against the company.

Judge Lucy Koh ruled that Apple has not established the case for a permanent injunction on Samsung's products because they were not able to prove that the "infringing features were what were directly driving consumer demand for the accused product."

Additionally, "neither statements about broad categories, nor evidence of copying, nor the conjoint survey provides sufficiently strong evidence of causation. Without a causal nexus, this Court cannot conclude that the irreparable harm supports entry of an injunction."

Samsung owes Apple $1.049 billion for the patent infringements.

Google has announced that its newly released Google Maps for iOS was downloaded over 10 million times in just 48 hours after release.

The number amounts to 2.5 percent of all iOS devices sold, which is sizeable in its own right, however the number is deceiving as the app is not available yet to all Apple owners.

"We're excited for the positive reception of Google Maps for iPhone around the world," writes Google's Jeff Huber via Google+. "Congratulations to the Maps Team on the recognition for the passion and hard work they poured into it, for this release and over the last 7+ years."

Google made its triumphant return to iOS after being removed as the default mapping/navigation application by Apple with the launch of iOS 6 and their own Apple Maps, which was riddled with bugs.

One of AfterDawn's US servers will be relocated tonight at midnight EST. This may cause slower site response times for our US visitors, but things will return back to normal once the server is again back online. For the duration of the relocation all traffic will be handled by our European servers.

The relocation is expected to last 3 hours maximum, but can take until 7:00 AM EST. We will update this news item as things progress.

If you experience problems accessing the site please try and clear your DNS cache or just bear with us for a couple of hours. =)

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Last week, Sprint offered $2.1 billion to buy the rest of Clearwire that it does not own. The carrier is the current majority owner of the company.

After shareholders fought for a higher price, Sprint decided to up its bid from $2.90 per share to $2.97 per share, equaling $2.2 billion.

Additionally, the deal gives Clearwire an "enterprise value of approximately $10 billion, including net debt and spectrum lease obligations of $5.5 billion."

Sprint will use the deal to strengthen their mobile broadband network and remain competitive against rivals AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile USA.

Adds CEO Dan Hesse: "Today's transaction marks yet another significant step in Sprint's improved competitive position and ability to offer customers better products, more choices and better services. Sprint is uniquely positioned to maximize the value of Clearwire's spectrum and efficiently deploy it to increase Sprint's network capacity. We believe this transaction, particularly when leveraged with our SoftBank relationship, is further validation of our strategy and allows Sprint to control its network destiny."

Hulu has revealed their 2012 figures, showing strong growth year-over-year.

Revenue increased 65 percent to $695 million, while subscribers jumped 50 percent from April to December hitting 3 million. Since December of last year, the subscriber base grew by 100 percent.

On the content side, Hulu and Hulu Plus titles grew by 40 percent, with 60,000 TV episodes, 2,300 series and 50,000 hours of video now available.

Hulu is also now available on 320 million devices in the U.S. not including desktops and laptops.

For the year, the company spent $500 million on content and generated $1 billion for its content partners. The company served over 1000 different ad partners, up a healthy 28 percent.

Thanks to Tinthe and their early dev L-series BlackBerry phone, we have a plethora of BlackBerry 10 UI screenshots.

The hardware itself is said to look similar to most new smartphone models, but then again we have only seen prototypes.

In the screenshots, we get a good feel for the new OS, which is RIM's first real entry into the modern smartphone OS wars dominated by just two, Android and iOS.

Long-standing streaming music company Rhapsody has finally launched an app for the iPad.

The move comes months, if not years, after rivals like Spotify made their tablet versions available. In fact, the company released their Android tablet version back in February.

When asked why the release took so long, Rhapsody says the iPad app was "built from the ground up" and will offer a "stunning" design and "swift responsiveness."

The company is offering a 30-day free trial for new users from their iPads.

More info here: Rhapsody for iPad

Google will expand their Google Fiber service to new cities in 2013.

The roadmap for the next five "fiberhoods" in Kansas City have been unveiled by the search giant, who will all get access to the extremely fast gigabit network.

Schedule via Crunch:

Piper Schools -- choose your plan by January 31, 2013
Delaware Ridge -- choose your plan by February 14, 2013
Painted Hills -- choose your plan by February 28, 2013
Open Door -- choose your plan by February 28, 2013
Arrowhead -- choose your plan by March 7, 2013

Just three weeks before they were purchased for $1 billion by Facebook, Instragram CEO Kevin Systrom had verbally agreed to be sold to Twitter.

The offer at the time was $525 million, but was obviously called off when the higher bid came in.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg offered $1 billion in a cash-and-stock deal, which eventually closed at $715 million following the decline in Facebook's stock value since May.

Twitter had given Instagram a term sheet with a proposed deal, but Systrom says they never received any "formal offers" from anyone but Facebook.

In the last month, Twitter has shut off the functionality that formerly allowed Twitter's official apps to display Instagram photos while introducing their own filters.

NPD DisplaySearch has noted this weekend that the iPad Mini is now outselling its bigger brother, the full-sized iPad.

Apple has doubled their display panel orders from component makers LG and AUO, from 6 million to 12 million.

The new product sells for $329 as a base model compared to $500 for the new fourth-generation iPad.

Says NPD: "The iPad Mini apparently is selling better than the new iPad 4. It seems people especially like the size...[it's] lighter, slimmer and easier to carry." Afterdawn completely agreed with this sentiment in our review.

Looking into the future, the group says 50 million iPad Minis sold could be sold next year.

Apple has announced today that it has sold 2 million new iPhone 5 in China in the first 72 hours of availability.

"Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible, setting a new record with the best first weekend sales ever in China," said CEO Tim Cook. "China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products."

The company also announced that the device will be available in over 100 countries by the end of the year, making it the fastest global iPhone rollout, ever.

Earlier in the day, Citibank lowered its rating on the company's stock, claiming a lack of demand for Apple's latest device.

According to recent reports, Intel has had discussions with the intent of possibly purchasing large chip maker Nvidia.

The reports claim Jen-Hsun Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, would become the head of the new merged company.

This is not the first time the companies have talked, with Intel opening discussions back in 2006 when rival AMD made their play to purchase ATI technologies. Nvidia wanted Huang to lead the merged company, even back then, and rebuffed the offer. Intel also offered to license GeForce graphics cores and integrate them into their recent "Sandy Bridge" Core i-Series but Nvidia also declined.

Intel's long-time CEO, Paul Otellini, will retire next May, and the company has been looking for a successor. Jen-Hsun Huang is a successful executive and has tons of experience in the industry, making him an ideal candidate.

Intel is a $100 billion company and Nvidia is worth about $8 billion, making a deal certainly feasible.

Microsoft has announced that the Surface RT tablet has made its way to John Lewis, its first UK retailer.

Priced at £479 and £559 for the 32GB and 64GB variants, online pre-orders have already sold out.

Tomorrow, the tablet will be available in all 41 of the company's stores.

Earlier in the week, the Redmond giant announced it would be increasing production of the Surface, while expanding sales to additional retailers in the U.S. including Best Buy and Staples.

The moves are notable, since the tablet had only been available online and through Microsoft's retail presence of under 50 stores.

Wal-Mart has significantly slashed the prices on new iOS devices.

The world's biggest retailer will sell the base model iPhone 5 for $127 with contract, while also cutting the price of the iPhone 4S to $47.

Additionally, the retailer is dropping the price of the 16 GB third-generation iPad with Wi-Fi to $399. Starting on Monday, the iPad deal will come with a $30 iTunes card for free, as well.

There had been a rumor that Wal-Mart would also discount the fourth generation iPad, as well, but a spokesperson has declined.

When the prices become effective, they will be the largest sales prices on iOS devices we have seen yet.

According to reports, a woman was tasered at an Apple Store in Newton, Massachusetts last week.

Xiaojie Li allegedly bought two iPhones last week at the store. Later in the week she went back to purchase two more, looking to buy the smartphones for her family back in China.

The Apple Store employees refused to sell her the last two, saying they didn't want the devices going into the black market.

Li insisted on purchasing the phones and refused to leave the store. Apple employees called the police, who tried to get the irate customer to leave but she would not and was eventually tasered. Li was then charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.

ZTE has announced it will unveil a high-end smartphone at next year's CES.

The company will reveal the Grand S on January 8th, although there has been little other info released.

So far, we know the Grand S will be a 5-inch device with a 1080p display and a quad-core processor. The phone will likely feature a 12MP camera.

Perhaps more notably, the phone will also feature a ceramic body and a "traditional Chinese style."

ZTE recently announced that it will invest $30 million to ensure they start having a presence in the U.S.

Redbox has launched its new Netflix rivaling streaming service.

Dubbed Redbox Instant, the service will debut in beta this month and go live in 2013. The service will cost $8 per month, the same as Netflix.

Additionally, users get four free DVD rentals per month from the company's thousands of kiosks. If you prefer Blu-rays, the service is $9 per month instead of $8.

For launch, the company has signed a deal with Epix, the content provider owned jointly by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Lionsgate and Paramount. Epix is available through Netflix and Amazon Prime, as well.

Redbox Instant is a joint venture between Redbox and Verizon, with Verizon owning a majority share. The company has a lot of catching up to do, starting with 5500 movies and TV episodes and no original programming.

Sprint has now offered $2.1 billion to buy the rest of Clearwire that it does not own.

The carrier is the current majority owner of the company.

At $2.1 billion, the company is offering $2.90 per share. The stock jumped to $3.15 today, making it clear that shareholders expect a higher buyout. If the company agrees to the $2.90 per share offer, Sprint will also offer an $800 million bridge loan to the company that has struggled to keep available cash.

Clearwire controls significant spectrum that Sprint would use to bolster their own LTE 4G network.

Most analysts believe the deal is a lowball offer and will merely act as a "starting point" for future negotiations. Some believed ultimately the deal will close at around $3 billion, a large premium from the current offer.

Sprint is flush with cash after being purchased by Japan's Softbank earlier this year.

Best Buy founder Richard Schulze is preparing to make a fully financed offer to buy back the company for up to $6 billion.

The billionaire has a mid-December deadline for any bids.

Originally, in August, Schulze made an initial offer of $8.2 billion, with the added purchase of debt for another $2 billion. Since then, however, Best Buy shares have continued to fall and analysts always had doubts as to whether the original bid was even feasible.

The reports claim Schulze will meet with his top advisors this week.

Schulze founded the company in 1966 and remains a 20 percent owner.

According to sources, 2013's Samsung Galaxy Note III will include a massive 6.3-inch screen, blending the lines between a phone and a tablet even more so than usual.

The original Note had a 5.3-inch screen and this year's Galaxy Note II has a 5.5-inch screen.

At 6.3-inches, the new smartphone will be only marginally smaller than Samsung's smaller tablets, which are 7 inches.

Samsung has been said to be cutting their LCD budgets significantly while moving that money to OLED and flexible displays.

The Note III is expected to launch at the end of the summer next year.

Just hours after being released for iOS, Google's new Maps app has become the most downloaded application in the App Store.

The free app is available in 40 countries and in 29 languages and Apple fans seem to be running as fast as they can to replace their buggy Apple Maps offering which came pre-loaded on iOS 6 devices like the latest iPad, iPad Mini and iPhone 5.

Apple's version became infamous for getting users lost and for its glaring lack of any kind of public transit navigation. Apple CEO Tim Cook had to apologize for the app, and the longtime exec behind iOS software was fired.

Reads Google's post:

People around the world have been asking for Google Maps on iPhone. Starting today, we're pleased to announce that Google Maps is here--rolling out across the world in the Apple App Store. It's designed from the ground up to combine the comprehensiveness and accuracy of Google Maps with an interface that makes finding what you're looking for faster and easier.

The search giant sees no interest.

Google Apps product management director Clay Bavor has noted today that the company has no plans to develop native Gmail, Drive or other business app products for Windows 8 or Windows Phone 8.

The exec did not rule out apps for the future but did say there was no interest from its clients on the systems: "We have no plans to build out Windows apps. We are very careful about where we invest and will go where the users are but they are not on Windows Phone or Windows 8. If that changes, we would invest there, of course."

Bavor says the company remains 100% committed to iOS and Android, with ongoing updates and improvements.

Additionally, he added: "We really see these as the first versions of our mobile experience, though, so we will continue to make big investments in mobile in 2013 with the goal of having beautiful mobile apps."

Oppo, best known for their luxury DVD/Blu-ray players and home theater setups, has launched their new flagship smartphone, the Find 5.

The device has a thin form factor and features a 5-inch 1080p display with 441ppi, Qualcomm's quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro APQ8064 chip with 2GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, Android 4.1.2 and a large 2,500mAh battery.

Additionally, the phone has an impressive 13MP 5fps camera with hardware-enabled HDR for both photos and video, a first for the industry. The company adds that the camera can capture slow motion at up to 120fps.

On the audio side, the Find 5 has Dirac HD, a technology used in Rolls Royce sound systems.

The Pope has tweeted his first Tweet today, a couple of weeks after signing up for the microblogging platform.

Vatican televisions recorded the situation, with the Pope tweeting from a tablet.

On his first attempt, Benedict apparently hit the send button too hard and the tweet didn't send so Archbishop Claudio Maria Celli of the Vatican's communications department helped him on the second try.

Reads the Tweet: "Dear friends, I am pleased to get in touch with you through Twitter. Thank you for your generous response. I bless all of you from my heart."

Since signing up, the Pope has just under 1 million followers. The Pope has sent 6 tweets since.

Offer everything you do to the Lord, ask his help in all the circumstances of daily life and remember that he is always beside you

-- Benedict XVI (@Pontifex) December 12, 2012

According to the WSJ, Apple is currently working with component suppliers in Asia to test multiple prototype designs of an upcoming HDTV.

Executives at the suppliers confirmed that Apple is testing different designs, implying a release could be imminent for 2013.

Hon Hai Precision Industry is working with Sharp on the designs, with one exec noting: "It isn't a formal project yet. It is still in the early stage of testing."

That being said, Apple has always tested and developed products internally before moving to suppliers so that at least means they have moved one step forward on their idea.

Apple has been in talks with content providers to create a set-top box that would carry live television and other streaming programming, with CEO Tim Cook recently stating that "turning on a TV today is like going backward in time by 20 to 30 years. It's an area of intense interest. I can't say more than that."

Warner Bros Entertainment and MGM Studios have partnered to invest significantly in the social and mobile gaming company Kabam.

Kabam is best known for its mobile strategy game "Kingdoms of Camelot" and its MMORPG "Dragons of Atlantis."

The company was founded in 2006 and focuses on "mid-core" games, a step above games like "FarmVille" but obviously below games like "Call of Duty."

Execs from each studio will join as board members for the private company.

Each studio has been moving into digital and gaming worlds over the years, as a way to supplement movie revenues.

A major focus of Windows 8 is convincing users to login using a Microsoft account (formerly Live ID) rather than a traditional local account. A Microsoft account is a sort of portal to access various cloud services including 25GB of free storage via SkyDrive which is accessible directly through various apps in the new modern UI.

While it certainly makes some things much more convenient, it also introduces new security concerns which don't apply to local user accounts. Some are specific to Microsoft's services while others are simply inherent risks which go along with integrating the cloud into your daily computer use.

Some of these issues also apply to Windows 8 workstations in enterprise environments. Although Microsoft account logins don't replace the standard active directory (Windows domain) login system, you can (if your employer allows it) connect a Microsoft account to your regular Windows login. This shifts some of the security burden to your employer's IT department there may still be some measures you should take for yourself.

In this article we will examine 5 things you can do to avoid potential security problems when using your Microsoft account to login to Windows 8. That doesn't mean I recommend doing so. In fact I use a local account almost exclusively, although I do have a Microsoft account. If using this new login method doesn't address some need you

Microsoft has announced new content partners for its Xbox Live service.

Joining Netflix, ESPN, and HBO and other current partners will be MTV, PBS and The CW among a plethora of new partners.

Altogether, Microsoft will add 40 partners, starting with 10 over the next week. The complete rollout will finish by March and leave Xbox Live with 115 total content partners.

Besides MTV and PBS, some of the more popular partners include Napster, Machinima, PopcornFlix, Ameba TV, CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, Deezer and Flixster.

Xbox Live currently has 40 million active users worldwide.

RuuviTracker wants to help you track everything.

The new project aims to develop a new GSM/GPS-enabled tracking system for a wide variety of uses. On the hardware side, the project aims to develop an affordable, water-proof, robust, high-quality and state-of-the-art device, capable of operating in temperatures as low as -40C.

Software for the device is open source, and specifications of RuuviTracker's physical design, circuit board Gerber files and information about needed components will be available for everyone, allowing for replica devices to be created.

While its not clear yet how much some RuuviTracker hardware will cost you, the project aims for it to be affordable to everyone, unlike some proprietary tracking devices/systems you can find on the market.

The purpose of the device is to help you track almost anything you want, whether it is your children, pets, hunting hound, car, boat.. just use your imagination.

Most of the RuuviTracker team members are volunteers and developers are welcome to join the project (RuuviTracker on GitHub).

You can follow RuuviTracker on Twitter: @RuuviTracker

Microsoft has announced today that they have boosted production of their Surface RT tablet and will also expand availability to new retail outlets.

The tablets will soon be available at Best Buy, Staples and other retailers which have thousands of retail stores across the nation.

Until this week, the device had only been available online or through Microsoft Stores, which are few and far between with none being on the East Coast at all.

Sales at Best Buy and Staples begin tomorrow with other retailers getting the devices next week.

Microsoft has yet to reveal sales numbers for their tablet, with analyst predictions being all over the map.

Upon celebrating the franchise's third birthday, Rovio has updated Angry Birds to version 3.0, adding 30 new levels.

Besides the levels, the developer has also brought out a "birdday" cake and a new Pink Bird character, which the company says is its "bubbliest bird" ever.

15 of the new levels will be Birdday party levels (including the cake) and 15 will be Bad Piggies levels.

Of course, you probably have your hands full at this point with Angry Birds Rio, Seasons, Space, Bad Piggies and the new Star Wars.

You can download the update for iOS and Android now.

Trent Reznor, lead singer for Nine Inch Nails, has announced a new partnership with Beats Audio.

The project will be a music streaming service set for launch early next year.

Codenamed "Daisy," the service will rival Spotify but add "expert curation" that Reznor says is "like having your own guy when you go into the record store, who knows what you like but can also point you down some paths you wouldn't necessarily have encountered."

Additionally, Daisy "uses mathematics to offer suggestions to the listener... [but also] would present choices based partly on suggestions made by connoisseurs, making it a platform in which the machine and the human would collide more intimately."

Beats, known for its headphone line and its recent partnership with HTC for Beats tech in smartphones also purchased streaming service MOG in 2011, but it is unclear if the two projects will intertwine in any way.

Earlier today, Google announced that it would offer the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook for $99 to public school teachers.

Through a partnership with online charity DonorsChoose.org, the company was offering the cheap Chromebooks for the price including management and support.

With its announcement, Google wrote: "To help budget-strapped classrooms across the country, we're working with DonorsChoose.org, an online charity that connects donors directly to public school classroom needs. For the holiday season, teachers can request the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook--the most widely deployed Chromebook in schools--at a special, discounted price of $99 including hardware, management and support.

If you're a full-time public school teacher in the U.S., visit DonorsChoose.org and follow the instructions to take advantage of this opportunity by December 21, 2012. Your request will be posted on DonorsChoose.org where anyone can make a donation to support your classroom. When you reach your funding goal, you'll receive your Chromebooks from Lakeshore Learning, DonorsChoose.org's exclusive fulfillment partner for this program."

According to Jefferies analyst Peter Misek, Apple will release the iPhone 5S in June, breaking its recent pattern of unveiling the flagship in late September.

Misek, who is known to be decently accurate about Apple's earnings and past iPhone info, says the new phone will have a "super HD camera/screen, a better battery, and NFC," along with "possible updates that include an IGZO screen for Retina+, 128GB storage."

Furthermore, the device will come in 8 different colorways, similar to the new iPod Touch.

It makes sense for Apple to quicken their release cycle, especially as competitors like Samsung have begun to crush them in quarters before the new iPhone launches as customers hold off on purchasing.

If all the predictions are accurate, the changes would be some of the biggest upgrades we have seen yet for an iPhone, which has struggled with lack of innovation in recent years.

Over a month before its launch, RIM has showed off a quick teaser of the upcoming BlackBerry 10 phone, codename "London."

London has been in development for the better part of two years, and RIM's teaser shows that the phone will have aesthetics different from existing devices.

Moving to the "mesh-leather" look of the Nexus 7, there was little else revealed about the phone.

RIM will reveal the phone at an event on January 30th, after over one year of delays. RIM has completely revamped their operating system, making it more modern.

Check the teaser page here: BlackBerry 10

A hacking group has dumped a massive amount of personal info to the Web in protest of the UN's new Internet regulation proposals.

Calling themselves "Team Ghostshell", the group has published 1.6 million usernames and passwords taken from the European Space Agency, the Center for Advanced Engineering, the aerospace contractor Crestwood Technology Group, Bigelow Aerospace, General Dynamics, the Japanese photonics firm Hamamatsu, a nanotechnology industry group, and a few others, adds Forbes.

Mainly, the group is angry at the UN body International Telecommunications Union, who is trying to "give U.N. countries' governments a stronger mandate over the Internet traffic flowing through their territory and allow control of domain name allocations by a central U.N. body."

Reads Ghostshell's post: "The ITU is hosting a meeting right now that may very well decide the fate of how the [internet] will be managed in the future. Basically the UN may very well give total power to the ITU on how to handle everything. The data dump is promoting hacktivism worldwide and drawing attention to the freedom of information on the net. For those two factors we have prepared a juicy release of 1.6 million accounts/records from fields such as aerospace, nanotechnology, banking, law, education, government, military, all kinds of wacky companies & corporations working for the department of defense, airlines and more."

According to their recent filings, Google was able to avoid almost $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by moving $10 billion in revenue to a shell company incorporated in Bermuda.

Bermuda does not have a corporate income tax, and the $10 billion was about 80 percent of Google's total pretax profit during the year.

The news is likely not good for Google, who is facing increased scrutiny in France, the UK, Italy and Australia over legal tax dodging. The EU, specifically, is asking member states to create anti-abuse rules for tax avoidance including creating a blacklist of tax havens, such as Bermuda and the Caymans.

For its part, Google stresses everything they do is completely legal (which it is) and that they boost the economies of the nations in which they employ workers: "For example, we also employ over 2,000 people, help hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow online, and invest millions supporting new tech businesses in East London." In the UK, Google paid $10 million in taxes on $4.1 billion in revenue.

In 2011, Google reported a tax rate of 3.2 percent on its overseas profits, even though most of its foreign sales in those nations should have had tax rates around 28 percent. Google is certainly not the only company to use such tactics, as Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks and other giants employ the same maneuvering.

GameStop has announced today that they have begun offering Amazon Kindle Fire tablets.

Included are the 7-inch and 8.9-inch versions of the Fire HD as well as the 7-inch Fire.

Pricing will match what Amazon sells them for online, but the gaming retailer will also include a free $25 gift card to Amazon with all purchases.

"Gaming is one of the most popular activities on Kindle Fire, so we're excited that GameStop is offering the new Kindle Fire family to its customers," Mike McKenna, vice president of Amazon Kindle, said in a press release.

Additionally, if you have an original Kindle Fire, you can trade it in for up to $100 in GS store credit.

Earlier this week, a woman purchased an iPad for her son through Best Buy.

The company, through some strange glitch, ended up sending her five. After emailing Best Buy to let them know what had happened, she then contacted the Consumerist asking what she should do in the situation.

Consumerist was able to get in touch with Best Buy, after Alexa couldn't:

Good afternoon, Alexa. Laura, from the Consumerist, contacted us here at Best Buy on your behalf. First and foremost, I wanted to let you know how much we appreciate your honesty. That is so rare in this day and age and I sincerely thank you! We here at Best Buy acknowledge that we obviously made a mistake, but in the spirit of the holidays, we encourage you to keep the additional iPads and give them to people in need -- friends, family, a local school or charity.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has announced today that all four major wireless carriers in the U.S. have agreed to fast track a service that will allow people to text 911 instead of needing to call.

Major deployments are set for 2013, with the service set to be available for everyone in the U.S. by May 15th, 2014.

"Access to 911 must catch up with how consumers communicate in the 21st century -- and today, we are one step closer towards that vital goal," Genachowski added.

The project is dubbed "Next Generation 9-1-1" and will include text messaging, photo, and video support.

When completed, the service will help residents who have hearing/speech disabilities or are in situations where calling the police may endanger them.

"This is good progress, but our work is not done," Genachowski added. "Next week the FCC will consider further actions to advance text-to-911 for all consumers. We will also take additional steps in this area next year, including closely monitoring carriers' compliance with the commitments they have made today and addressing other aspects of Next Generation 9-1-1 such as enabling transmission of photos and videos to 911 centers."

Valve boss Gabe Newell has announced this week that the company will be launching a console built for the living room next year.

Newell says the company's main focus now is how to make PCs work better in the living room on the big screen. The first step was releasing their "Big Picture" UI earlier this year.

PC packages that are designed to run on a TV will be launched next year, by Valve and by other manufacturers, with each being able to run Steam flawlessly out of the gate.

Newell says the PCs will compete with the Xbox 8 and the PS4.

"I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them," Newell noted to Kotaku. "Cause they won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments. We'll do it but we also think other people will as well."

Twitter has announced this week that the official URL shortener, t.co, will increase its character usage by 2.

Starting in February, the shortened link will move from 20 to 22 characters for non-HTTPS links and obviously from 21 to 23 for those with secure links.

While Twitter will not have to worry about running out of the number of different URLs that can exist now, users may have to be a little more cautious when writing slightly longer tweets if there is a link there.

Additionally, users can still use other link shorteners such as bit.ly.

The move is permanent starting February 6th.

Kim Dotcom has posted a few screenshots of the upcoming Mega filesharing service, showing off some of the most used features.

The site, located at Mega.co.nz, will have a full launch early in the new year.

In his screenshots, Dotcom shows off the encryption key generator, the new registration page, and the file manager.

Mega will use 2048-bit RSA encryption keys, and the file manager seems much more robust than any we have seen to date, including the old Megaupload. The manager includes the ability to donwload and upload (of course), along with a new inbox and contacts section, implying you will be able to write messages or send email-esque mail to other members of Mega.

The pics:

Nokia has unveiled the Lumia 620, a device the company believes will "give you the most fun for your money."

The device has a small 3.8-inch display and is powered by a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and 512MB of RAM. The phone also has NFC connectivity 8GB internal storage but there is a microSD card slot, as well.

Additionally, the phone has dual cameras and Nokia's own lens technology built into both.

"With its innovative design, the latest Windows Phone 8 software and signature experiences from Nokia, like Nokia lenses, Nokia Maps and Nokia Music, the Nokia Lumia 620 is a highly competitive smartphone at this price point," added Nokia Smart Devices' executive vice president, Jo Harlow.

As with most Lumia phones, the device will be available in numerous colors including lime green, orange, cyan, magenta, yellow, black and white.

Two weeks after its debut in the U.S., the Wii U has made its way to Japan.

Japan has the world's third biggest economy, and video game industry sales have been growing in the nation, unlike the U.S. and Europe, where the industry has been in decline for years.

"Nintendo has a better chance to succeed in Japan, as they have more strongly rooted fans at home," added Satoru Kikuchi, an analyst at Deutsche Bank AG. "Still, success in the U.S. is required to generate profits."

Industry-wide sales of software and hardware grew 11 percent to 175.3 billion yen in Japan for the six month period ended September 30th. Most of the gain has come from Nintendo systems, especially the handheld 3DS.

On the other hand, the U.S. market shrank 11 percent year-over-year in November, with hardware, software and accessory sales falling to $2.55 billion.

Barnes & Noble has made a permanent price cut to its popular Nook Simple Touch e-reader.

The e-reader will sell for $79 now, matching its Black Friday pricing last year,

Nook Simple Touch was the first major consumer e-reader to be fully touchscreen, beating out the Kindle. The company sells an upgraded version, with Glowlight backlighting for nighttime and dim light reading, for $119.

As of now, Amazon sells its base model Kindle (without touch) for $69 so the e-reader war is getting even more competitive.

The price change goes permanent starting tomorrow.

According to an investor note by T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, it appears T-Mobile USA will get the iPhone starting next year.

T-Mobile, the fourth biggest carrier in the U.S., will be the last of the majors to get the flagship device.

The original note read: "In addition, T-Mobile USA has entered into an agreement with Apple to bring products to market together in 2013." The carrier's CEO has since confirmed.

CEO John Legere says the iPhone experience for T-Mobile will be "dramatically different" than consumers are used to.

Analysts were quick to speculate, saying the company could sell about 5 million iPhones in the first year of availability, a strong figure given the carrier only has 33 million customers.

The carrier will sell the iPhone for just $99, with customers paying an extra $15 per month on top of their normal subscription to ease the one-time cost.

As for 4G? The HSPA+ network will be updated for iPhones for all customers by launch, and their upcoming LTE 4G network will reach 100 million people by next July.

According to Google, the popular Android service "Google Now" is now being built into the Chrome browser.

The technology, which was released with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, uses your browsing, email, location and contacts to bring "card"-based notifications relating to weather reports, birthday alerts, nearby restaurant reviews, scores from your favorite sports teams, calender reminders, and traffic updates for your route home.

As of yesterday, Google programmers have added a "skeleton for Google Now for Chrome" to the Google browser, an early but important step in the ongoing project.

Google continues to integrate all their platforms, no matter what operating system you use.

Apple and Google have partnered up to bid on Eastman Kodak's patents out of bankruptcy.

The imaging pioneer has over 1100 patents and went into bankruptcy earlier this year.

While Google and Apple are major rivals and a partnership seems extremely unlikely, in the patent world it is sometimes necessary. Last year, Apple teamed up with Microsoft and RIMM to purchase $4.5 billion worth of Nortel patents in an effort to keep them away from Google.

"Apple and Google learned a lesson from the Nortel's auction," notes Richard Ehrlickman, former vice president of Intellectual Property at IBM. "They have decided to come together in this process to reduce the cost of purchasing the Kodak patents, while meeting their business needs."

Each company had led separate groups to bid on the patents before teaming up. Apple joined with Microsoft and offered about $350 million while Google teamed up with RSX and Asian Android makers while offering the same. The two decided to pay up whilst teaming up.

Microsoft is allegedly preparing to offer their Surface RT tablet in stores other than their own.

If true, the company will offer the tablet in stores like Best Buy and Staples, making it much more accessible for the average consumer or for those who want to be able to see and test the device before purchasing.

Microsoft currently sells the device through 32 brick-and-mortar stores, mainly on the West Coast, and online.

"This was always going to happen in very early 2013, but the software giant has apparently decided to ramp up the speed and make it happen before the holiday selling season is over," says Paul Thurrott, who is known to be accurate.

The tablet, which sells for $500 (base model), received mixed reviews at launch. Our own review loved the hardware, but was not impressed by the lack of legacy app support.

An updated model, running on Intel and with legacy app support, is set for release in January with a much higher price tag.

Spotify has proudly announced that Metallica music is now available via the streaming service.

Metallica became infamous in the digital music world over a decade ago when they became influential in getting Napster shut down. The company sued the file sharing service and their own fans, over Metallica music being made available, free of charge, without their consent.

Eventually, the band embraced the changing world and made their music available on iTunes and other sites.

The deal with Spotify will be good for the band member's wallets, as well, since they will pocket all the revenue made from the streams, being that they own all their own music rights.

Spotify just got louder! We're thrilled to have @metallica's music catalog now on Spotify! #spotifydiscovery

-- Spotify (@Spotify) December 6, 2012

This week, Dropbox has announced that their official Windows 8 application is coming soon.

The app has been submitted for certification in the Windows 8 Store and will most likely receive it within the week.

As with each new Windows 8 app, it will feature a Modern UI. The app "will support access to files, photos and media files stored in the cloud from the desktop but also on Windows RT devices like the Surface," says the company.

Aditya Agarwal, Vice President of Engineering at Dropbox, also added that the new app reconfirms the company's focus on making Dropbox available on most modern devices for easy sharing no matter what you own.

Forbes has released their annual list of the world's most powerful people and placed Microsoft founder Bill Gates at number four.

The list takes wealth and influence into account, and the list is unsurprisingly topped by American President Barack Obama.

Due to founding Microsoft, Gates has a net worth of $65 billion, even after donating over $20 billion to various charities and causes. He is the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which has aimed to remove numerous diseases from the planet or at least better educate the world's inhabitants.

Gates says the Foundation will save billions of lives by 2020.

Additionally, Gates has gotten 91 wealthy individuals to agree to donate most of their wealth towards philanthropy, as he and Warren Buffet will do when they pass.

Other notable tech figures on the list are Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google at #20, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook at #25, Jeff Bezos of Amazon at #27, Tim Cook of Apple at #35, and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at #48.

Nokia has officially announced the Lumia 920T smartphone for China Mobile.

The device will launch on December 21st and sell off contract for 4599 RMB ($739) in four different colorways; black, red, yellow and white.

Being the first Windows Phone 8 device to be available on China Mobile is significant given the fact the carrier has 700 million subscribers and does not offer the iPhone. The phone will be redesigned with a TCDMA chip, for China's 3G networks.

Nokia sold just 2.9 million Lumia devices last quarter, a huge disappointment compared to Samsung and Apple, which sold over 30 million of their smartphones.

"We are delighted to partner with China Mobile, the world's largest operator, to introduce China's first Lumia based on Windows Phone 8. People around the world are responding positively to the new Lumia devices, and we're confident that the enthusiasm will extend to China with the Lumia 920T," added Stephen Elop, President and CEO of Nokia.

Even though the Apple App Store has over 700,000 apps and thousands of developers, most of the revenues come from just 25 of them.

The figure comes via Canalys, which says $60 million of the $120 million in total revenue generated from paid app downloads and in-app purchases for the U.S. in November was split between 25 devs.

As expected, in that group were Disney, EA, Gameloft, Rovio and Zynga, among others. All but one of the top 25 devs were game makers, with the one exception being Pandora.

EA has 962 games for iOS, Zynga offers at least 10 popular games, as do Rovio and the others.

"With the holiday season now underway, we expect to see many of these top game developers employing discounts and special offers, taking advantage of their ability to cross-promote within their app portfolios," adds Canalys principal analyst Chris Jones. "This is expected to ensure that over the Christmas period in the US, the dominance of key game developers will only increase."

Although Rockstar Games has not yet officially revealed the date, Amazon has let it slip.

GTA V will hit the PS3 and the Xbox 360 on June 19th, on the very edge of the publisher's promised "Spring" release date.

Rockstar has said they are "considering" other platforms like PC and Wii U, but has to judge the potential profitability of the platforms.

The game, which follows the story line of three main protagonists, is said to have a world two times bigger than Liberty City and San Andreas combined.

Check the trailer here: GTA V Trailer #2

Blockbuster will begin testing selling mobile phones in its stores.

Dish Network, parent company of Blockbuster, is expected to enter the wireless business sometime next year, becoming a new rival to the major carriers in the nation.

Blockbuster currently sells phones online through "Blockbuster Mobile," partnering with Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile USA.

The company still has 850 retail locations and the phones will be available in every location.

Dish has been purchasing spectrum and infrastructure for years and has been looking for a partner (Google has been rumored) before launching.

The European Commission has imposed a record fine for antitrust against six major companies for practicing as a cartel for the better part of a decade.

Philips, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung SDI, Toshiba and Technicolor will have to pay 1.47 billion euros together for their part.

EC officials concluded the companies fixed prices on CRT monitors and TVs for years, meeting in secret in different locations from 1996 all the way until 2006.

"These cartels for cathode-ray tubes are 'textbook cartels': they feature all the worst kinds of anti-competitive behavior that are strictly forbidden to companies doing business in Europe," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement.

Activision's latest hit, 'Call of Duty: Black Ops II," has reached $1 billion in revenue in just 15 days.

The figure outpaced the game's predecessor 'Modern Warfare 3,' which took 16 days.

Although it is an apples-to-oranges comparison, the publisher says BOII is outpacing Hollywood's biggest success story, Avatar, which took 17 days to reach the milestone.

Additionally, CEO Robert Kotick says players logged over 150 million hours of BOII gaming via Xbox Live and PSN.

The game had reached $500 million in its first 24 hours, handily beating out MW3's $400 million in the same time period.

According to NetApplications, Windows XP has fallen below 40 percent market for the first time since it passed the mark a decade ago.

Windows 7 kept its majority stake, at 44.71 percent, up from 36 percent at the beginning of the year. XP began the year at 47 percent.

Vista continued its slow but sure decline, falling from 8 percent at the beginning of the year to 5.7 percent now.

Windows 8, released in late October, moved up to 1.09 percent share.

Apple's Mac OS X versions 10.6 and 10.7 combined for 4.38 percent while Linux and "others" combined for the remaining 4.5 percent.

According to benchmark results, there is strong potential that a 7-inch Galaxy Note tablet is coming.

The device, the Samsung GT-N5100, has a 1.6GHz quad-core processor, runs on Android 4.1.2 and the display is a somewhat disappointing 1280x720 resolution.

If the rumors prove to be true, the device will ship with the S Pen stylus and the entire suite familiar to Note smartphone and Note 10.1 tablet owners.

Samsung recently released the Note 10.1 and manufactured the Google Nexus 10, both of which have been popular.

Offering a 7-inch tablet with S Pen may be the sweet spot as customers rapidly move to the smaller form factor as their choice for a portable device.

According to multiple sources, Nokia has struck a deal with China Mobile to offer the Lumia 920 in the nation.

China Mobile is China's biggest carrier, with over 700 million subscribers and 80 million 3G smartphone users.

A model of the phone will be built with China's TD-SCDMA technology and will be available before the new year.

Android is the overwhelmingly popular platform in China, with over 90 percent of smartphone owners using Android devices. iPhones are not available through China Mobile due to the specialized CDMA tech, making the phone a small player in the nation.

The Lumia 920 is the company's new flagship Windows Phone 8 phone, featuring Nokia's suite of apps and more powerful hardware.

Netflix will be the only U.S. online video service to have first-run rights to Disney's live action and animated films.

Besides new films, the companies have agreed to a catalog deal, as well, bringing classics like Dumbo and Pocahontas to your TVs, PCs and mobile devices.

The first-run portion of the deal will begin for theatrical releases in 2016 and include all new Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios and Disneynature titles.

Most notably, the titles will be available even during the pay TV windows, where historically only subscription services like HBO and on-demand services had access. The first pay window is set after the PPV/rental period, which can be as soon as 2 months after release of disc. Most of Netflix's catalog deals are "second pay," which can be as long as a 10 month wait.

Finally, direct-to-video releases will be available starting next year with the release of Cinderella III.

Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix: "Disney and Netflix have shared a long and mutually beneficial relationship and this deal will bring to our subscribers, in the first pay TV window, some of the highest-quality, most imaginative family films being made today."

You are likely already aware of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) which opened in Dubai on Monday. This two week conference is where a review of the International Telecommunications Rules established by a 1988 treaty is being conducted by representatives of the 178 International Telecommunications Union (ITU) members who are party to it.

The ITU, originally formed as an industry association for telegraph operators in the 1800s, has expanded over the years to become a United Nations agency with a membership consisting of nearly 200 countries and more than 700 private organizations. Although only states have votes on the adoption of ITU policy and rules, all members may propose changes.

There have been numerous accusations about secret agendas behind the most significant changes proposed to ITU-T rules which govern wireline communications across the legacy PSTN (Public Switched Telephone Network). Despite the fact nearly all such arguments being charged with political rhetoric and grandstanding, most of them are sadly very accurate. Rather than trying to summarize them all here I'm going to highlight the worst of the worst and provide links to more detailed information on each.

Netflix and Sony jointly announced today that the PS3 is the most popular device for streaming Netflix content.

The statistic took into account all gaming consoles and set-top boxes, totaling in the hundreds, that can stream the company's 25,000-strong video catalog.

"PS3 is our largest TV-connected platform in terms of Netflix viewing, and this year, at times, even surpassed the PC in hours of Netflix enjoyment to become our No. 1 platform overall," noted Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO. "PS3 is a natural fit for Netflix in terms of developing and first deploying our most advanced features. We can transparently update our application with new features on a daily basis, and through the free PlayStation Network, people around the world can sign up for Netflix directly from their PS3."

The PS3 was the first to offer Netflix in full HD (1080p) with 5.1 surround sound.

AT&T has announced the expansion of its LTE network to six new markets, including three in Puerto Rico.

With the new expansion, the service is now available to 150 million consumers, says the carrier.

The new markets are Albuquerque, N.M., Reading, Penn., Salt Lake City, Utah, Guayama, San German-Cabo Rojo, and Yauco in Puero Rico.

AT&T's high-speed mobile network is now available in 109 markets. Rival Verizon has 440 LTE markets, reaching 250 million consumers.

The carrier says it plans to blanket the U.S. by the end of 2013 while Verizon will likely do so two quarters earlier.

While Nintendo has kept certain aspects of the Wii U hardware secret, developer "Marcan" has released them for the masses.

Marcan has revealed the CPU and GPU clock speeds for the new console, which on the surface do not appear to be too spectacular but very efficient

According to the dev, the Wii U's CPU speeds run at 1.24 GHz per core with 3x PowerPC type cores. Additionally, the GPU speed of the Wii U is 550 MHz.

The current generation Xbox and PS3 consoles run at 3.2GHz, but the dev notes that clock speeds aren't everything: "So yes, the Wii U CPU is nothing to write home about, but don't compare it clock per clock with a 360 and claim it's much worse. It isn't."

@digitalfoundry 1.243125GHz, exactly. 3 PowerPC 750 type cores (similar to Wii's Broadway, but more cache). GPU core at 549.999755MHz.

-- Hector Martin (@marcan42) November 29, 2012

A Google employee has let it be known that the next iteration of Android will be dubbed "Key Lime Pie."

Posting the drawing to his Google+ account, the employee pictured the evolution of the operating system from its humble beginnings as "Cupcake" all the way to a giddy Android eating a piece of key lime pie.

Cupcake was Android 1.5, Donut was 1.6, Eclair was 2.0, Froyo was 2.2, Gingerbread was 2.3, Honeycomb was 3.x and more recently Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 and Jelly Bean 4.1. The drawing is a play on the evolution of man, with the earlier versions of the OS playing our ape ancestors.

Judging by the drawing, the employee feels Ice Cream is the real start of a new era, as it is the first droid to be standing erect.

According to leaked WD slides, the company is planning two 5TB hard drives for release by the end of next year.

The slides show a WD Green and a WD Red model, each of which will be standard 3.5-inch SATA 3 6 Gb/s models.

Green-series hard drives are manufactured with lead-free, conflict-free and halogen-free materials and are environmentally conscious.

Additionally, 4TB Red and Green models will be released sometime in the Q2 or Q3 of next year, following the recent release of a 4TB Black model.

"Maximizing the features and functionality of power computing applications such as gaming, multimedia and video editing, the new WD Black 4 TB hard drives offer capacity and performance--without compromise," said Matt Rutledge, vice president of WD's client storage group, at the time. "In choosing WD Black hard drives, WD desktop customers get the best possible mix of capacity, performance and reliability to handle intense desktop computing with ease."

See pics of the slides at the source.

Apple has announced that it will launch the iPhone 5 in 50 new markets during December.

Starting with South Korea on Friday the 7th, the phone will be launched in Albania, Antigua and Barbuda, Armenia, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, China, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Ecuador, Grenada, Indonesia, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Kuwait, Macedonia Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, Panama, Paraguay, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Taiwan, Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela before the 14th.

On the 21st, Apple will launch their flagship in Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Tunisia, Uganda and Vietnam.

Earlier today, the Vatican announced that Pope Benedict XVI would begin posting messages to Twitter beginning next week.

The Pope will tweet from the handle @pontifex, a Latin-based term used for the Pope.

As of today, despite never tweeting, he currently has 445,000 followers while he follows just 7 users, all of which are just different language versions of himself. The religious figure will not follow nor retweet anyone.

The Vatican has begun a new topic, #askpontifex, if anyone has questions related to matters of the faith.

All posts will be released in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Spanish with more languages expected into the future.

While aides will write all of the Pope's posts, he will actively "engage" in each one and also must "approve" the content.

Mozilla has announced their latest social initiative today, adding Facebook Messenger to Firefox.

Says the browser maker:

Today, we're excited to announce that Firefox is getting social with Facebook Messenger for Firefox, which is built on a new Social API for the Web.

Firefox is the Web browser of choice for hundreds of millions of people worldwide and as social sites have become a key part of people's online lives, we want to make it easier to use the Web the way you want. People visit social sites throughout the day to chat with friends and get real time updates about new activity. In fact, most people online visit social sites to account for about 20% of all time spent online worldwide.

We experimented with new and better ways to integrate social into your Web experience and are excited to launch our first social integration with Facebook Messenger for Firefox! You can read more about our work with the Facebook team in this post.

To add the Messenger, visit here: Messenger for Firefox

Last week, Nokia posted an ad to LinkedIn, searching for an experienced senior software engineer with Linux experience.

The ad claims the new employee will be working in a "startup environment" working on "exciting new products" for "future mobile phone technology." At the time, many took that to mean that Nokia may be looking to complement its Windows Phone lineup with Android devices, the lead Linux-based mobile OS.

Today, Nokia's Media Relations spokesman Doug Dawson has killed the speculation behind the listing, which was for a "Principal Software Engineer, Embedded Linux Middleware."

Says Dawson: "Hi. Our recently posted job is linked to our HERE Maps support for other platforms, including iOS and Android. Nothing more."

Despite the excitement at the possibility of a Nokia Android phone, it isn't coming.

@paulo_mealha Hi. Our recently posted job is linked to our HERE Maps support for other platforms, including iOS and Android. Nothing more.

-- Doug Dawson (@DougatNokia) December 2, 2012

News Corp. has decided to shut down its all digital iPad newspaper "The Daily" after just two years.

As of December 15th, the company will "cease standalone publication" of the tablet application.

The paper's 120 employees will mainly be moved into the company's New York Post division, or laid off.

Adds CEO Rupert Murdoch (via ATD): "From its launch, The Daily was a bold experiment in digital publishing and an amazing vehicle for innovation. Unfortunately, our experience was that we could not find a large enough audience quickly enough to convince us the business model was sustainable in the long-term. Therefore we will take the very best of what we have learned at The Daily and apply it to all our properties. Under the editorial leadership of Editor-in-Chief Col Allan and the business and digital leadership of Jesse, I know The New York Post will continue to grow and become stronger on the web, on mobile, and not least, the paper itself. I want to thank all of the journalists, digital and business professionals for the hard work they put into The Daily."

Earlier this year, all the members of the once popular IMAGiNE piracy release group plead guilty to copyright infringement.

In 2011, the P2P top group stopped distributing new CAM and TS releases, and the P2P world began speculating that maybe they had been caught. This proved true as rumor has it a rival P2P group sold them out to the MPAA which then turned to the authorities. The group had released hundreds of films, many of which were recorded in movie theaters by members of the group.

This week, the group's "Sysop" has been sentenced to 40 months in prison, far and away the largest punishment for illegal file sharing in the history of the U.S.

Two of the other members had already been sentenced, to 23 and 30 months in prison.

Gregory Cherwonik, 53, of New York, will serve the jail time and then be placed on probation for three years where he will not be given access to any electronic device that can reproduce copyrighted material. Many have taken that to mean he will not be able to own a computer for three years.

Apple has made its iPhone 5 available, unlocked, in the U.S.

The off-contract device will start at $650, and will include LTE for AT&T and Canadian carriers like Bell and Rogers.

Additionally, the phone will work on GSM HSPA+ everywhere.

At its most expensive, the phone will cost $849 for 64GB.

Just like its carrier subsidized brothers, the iPhone will be available in black and white.

Apple will soon offer gift cards in different denominations.

Available at retail stores and supermarkets, the iTunes gift cards will be available in any denomination you want between $15 and $500.

Previously, there were only a few cards available, in certain amount, such as $25, $50 and $100.

Allegedly, at least one major supermarket chain and one retailer will make the cards available tomorrow.

How the cards work is you pick them up, take them to the register, and tell the cashier the amount you want. They will validate the card and the buyer can redeem the code however they choose.

For now, you cannot buy the cards online, even through Apple.

Groupon has announced today that the daily deals site will now offer deals from all MLB (Major League Baseball) teams.

The tickets will be available through GrouponLive, the company's online ticketing platform.

Live started as a partnership with Live Nation and users can now find tickets for concerts, sports, theater and other live events.

Baseball teams had made deals with Groupon during the last season, but it was on an individual basis.

Some of the teams will offer "once-in-a-lifetime experiential packages" which include access to batting practices, luxury box seats, and clubhouse and ballpark tours, says TNW.

Groupon will certainly need more deals like this if it hopes to remain in business. Its shares have fallen from highs of $26 last year to just $4 as of today.